China’s economy faces an uphill struggle despite recent pickup
AUGUST 2014 VOL. 25, NO. 8
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Q&A: New BRICS bank will help Beijing’s geopolitical goals
Forming a cluster Building better integration between cities is the way forward for urbanization 中经评论：多屏互动时代
AUGUST 2014 VOL. 25, NO. 8
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AUGUST 2014 VOL. 25, NO. 8
THE HOUSE VIEW Published monthly since 1990 Publisher China Economic Review Publishing Editor Oliver Pearce Staff Writer Hudson Lockett Chinese Editor Liu Chen Associate Editor Skye Sun Contributors Tom Nunlist Interns Kangning Chen, Colleen Howe Art Director Jason Wong Editor at Large Graham Earnshaw Associate Publisher Gareth Powell Director of Sales and Marketing Ralph Wang Account Manager Jerry Cheng CHINA ECONOMIC REVIEW (ISSN: 1350-6390) is published by China Economic Review Publishing Enquiries cer@ChinaEconomicReview.com
06 COMFORTING CLUSTERS | Time to break up the megacity
MONTH IN REVIEW 08 NEWS BRIEF | The biggest China news stories in July
Q&A AND COLUMNS 10 AUTOMATED LABOR | China has become the world’s largest market for industrial robotics
12 WITHIN TOUCHING DISTANCE | JLL’s Jeremy Kelly discusses Shanghai’s rise as a “super city”
14 BITCOIN GOES PLASTIC | The digital currency may have fallen in value as Chinese speculators fled the market but one Hong Kong firm is betting that consumers will want to spend it in stores
16 BUILDING THE BRICS BANK | How Beijing will use the New Development Bank to weave a web around Washington and further its economic diplomacy goals
18 DRILLING WITH FRIENDS | The next wave of China’s overseas
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20 CLUSTER FORMATION | For a better future urban environment China needs to break up its megacities
BUSINESS 26 FLYING PARCELS | Commercial drones are the latest hot product in the technology world and Chinese firms want in
ECONOMICS & POLICY 31 NOT OVER THE HILL YET | China hit its 7.5% GDP target in the second quarter but the economy is still facing a downward path in the coming year
33 A FAIR IP TRIAL? | Apple once again finds itself in a Chinese court over an intellectual property dispute but of all the challenges it faces in its biggest market, legal bias may not be one of them HKABC membership membership approved approved and and certifi certified ed HKABC
35 BLUEPRINT FOR TROUBLE | The problems at Xilin Steel underscore the risks in privatizing state assets
THE HOUSE VIE W
Comforting clusters In planning how to move hundreds of millions of people into cities, China’s urban planners should consider an alternative to the suffocating megacity
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hina’s urbanization has long captured the imagination. Over the past two decades the sight of millions of people moving from farm to concrete residential compounds consisting of buildings that pierce the sky has been evocative and thought provoking. By 2030, 70% of the population, or around one billion people, will live in cities, if a government blueprint released earlier this year becomes reality. The story though is about more than just this movement of people – the trend is long established and virtually irreversible. The urban areas where they will live are now the focus. Headlines talk about the urban titans that are emerging in China, from Beijing to Chongqing. They are often dubbed “megacities,” vast sprawling areas that encompass every conceivable industry and social function. The idea behind this concept is to bring everything under one roof, to turn big cities into self-sustaining worlds of their own. Megacities carry negative connotations of density, overpopulation and pollution but they are not inherently bad. As urban conurbations grow public services and utilities scale up quickly, in effect reducing the negative footprints of inhabitants. Water and heating are provided in tight networks over shorter distances while waste collection is more focused and therefore efficient. Even energy intensity can be stable. However, they are clean and smart only up to a certain size, experts caution. According a 2013 report by the Urban China Initiative, a think tank focusing on sustainable urbanization co-founded by the McKinsey Global Institute, Columbia University and Tsinghua University, megacities eventually hit a turning point in sustainability. This comes when the population tops 4.5 million and density is higher than 8,000 people per square 06
China Economic Review | August 2014
kilometre. The likes of Shanghai and Guangzhou are already past that point. In this frenetic era of planning and construction the time has come for the giant cluster city. Often used interchangeably, the terms cluster city and megacity are not the same. The latter is a densely packed area, the former a collection of small cities around a central node that share strong transportation and infrastructure links. The cluster cities paradigm is, at its heart, a way of rethinking the economic model upon which giant cities are based. Many of the other factors under sustainability are more or less related to that central principle. Cities in a cluster can draw on the resources of central cities and begin to specialize in certain economic fields instead of trying to do it all as megacities have done in the past. In our April issue, China Economic Review argued that Shanghai cannot hope to be both a service center rooted in finance while at the same time maintain its industrial base if it ever wants to get rid of its pollution problem and become more sustainable. At least at some regional levels, Chinese economic and urban planners are making plans for such groupings. In Beijing, the pressing need to curb pollution and general overcrowding – the capital city’s population has increased by two-thirds since the year 2000 – has created a desire to move not just industrial production to the surrounding regions of Tianjin and Hebei but also up to five million people. Similarly, the Pearl River Delta manufacturing hub is working at more closely integrating Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Dongguan plus six additional smaller cities. Leafy Suzhou that lies just past the distant outskirts of Shanghai is eyeing closer ties to the financial hub. Real estate agency JLL now even uses the term “Greater Shanghai” to describe the tie-up.
Theoretically speaking, a husband could commute to Dongguan, the wife to Guangzhou, and both return after work to their home in the middle. They would also be shopping mostly where they live, and consuming social services there as well – the burden on different systems, such as medical care and education, would be more thinly spread throughout the region. Indeed, part of the “turning point” problem lies in that the central megacities have been overwhelmed with increasing populations faster than public services such as hospitals and schools can keep up. Cluster cities also create more space for experimenting with urbanization and figuring out what works and doesn’t work. China cannot afford to build up thousands of cities that are flawed if its grand development ambitions are to be realized. If a sub-city in the cluster fails then it isn’t out there alone, as a megacity would be. There are resources to fall back on. Despite the benefits of clustering cities there is no simple roadmap for urbanizing millions more people. Clusters also face huge challenges. Economic growth is still an important evaluation metric for local government officials so there could be a reluctance to allow industry to leave or for a city to lump all its eggs in one basket. Not every big emerging city can work in a cluster, simply because some are too isolated to link up with other urban areas. This is the case with Urumqi in western Xinjiang province. A failing big city would eat up state funds and worsen an already bad government debt problem that could hurt China’s financial stability. Yet amid all of the uncertainty surrounding mass urbanization, cluster cities clearly have an edge over the megacity. The future path for urban China should be to integrate, not subsume.
NEWS ROUNDUP
MONTH IN REVIEW
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China’s GDP rose 7.5% in the AprilJune period from a year earlier, the first acceleration in growth in three quarters, according to official data. That was higher than 7.4% in the previous quarter and came on the back of higher state spending and credit easing. Industrial production rose 9.2% in June from a year earlier, topping the 9% median estimate of analysts and 8.8% in May. Fixedasset investment excluding rural households increased 17.3% in the first half from a year earlier. “The data are quite positive,” said Zhu Haibin, chief China economist at JPMorgan in Hong Kong.
China’s debt-to-GDP ratio reached 251% at the end of June, an increase from 147% at the end of 2008, Financial Times reported, citing estimates from Standard Chartered. Chinese policymakers have warned that the combination of slowing headline growth rates and ever-increasing debt dependency is unsustainable and has led to misallocation of capital, result-
ing in massive overcapacity. The growing dependency shows no sign of being reversed, with the debt-toGDP ratio increasing by 17% in the last six months. Rather than reining in credit, the government has let it accelerate because of fears that slowing growth could trigger a hard landing. Estimates of China’s debt-toGDP ratio vary depending on the type of credit included. Twenty of 25 provinces and provincial-level cities reporting economic data experienced growth in the first half of the year, Bloomberg reported, citing local-government data. The news signals an upturn after 30 of 31 provinces previously reported first-quarter expansion below regional goals. “Both the national and provincial figures show a clear pickup, though the provincial ones more obviously so,” said economist Xu Gao, cautioning that provincial governments have incentives to inflate GDP figures. The regions are benefiting from central government investment as well as local government stimulus. Nationwide, the first-half and first-quarter growth numbers were both 7.4%, while expansion increased 0.1% in the second quarter.
Finance
Chinese banks have halted a trial program letting customers bypass capital controls to transfer large sums of money overseas after an expose by state television, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed sources. The program was launched
WE ARE FAMILY: BRICS nations leaders celebrate their new development bank, to be based in Shanghai
by the People’s Bank of China two years ago and allowed approved banks including Bank of China to offer the service in Guangdong. The halt comes after criticism from China’s state broadcaster, underscoring the political sensitivity of wealthy Chinese moving money abroad. Officials close to PBOC believe the program will continue, as it is in keeping with Beijing’s efforts to promote the yuan’s use overseas.
Credit: Nathan Paculba
Economy
Beijing agreed to stop interfering with the value of the yuan “as conditions permit,” representing a modicum of progress on an issue that has dogged US-China relations for years, Reuters reported. China’s Central Bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan
CHINA BY NUMBERS Amount China will lend to Argentina for the construction of two hydroelectric dams
$7.5bn 08
China Economic Review | August 2014
33% Increase in property sales in June
Percentage of new government vehicles that will be powered by alternative energy by 2016
$14bn
30%
China’s foreign aid to Africa from 2010 to 2012
said China would allow supply-anddemand to play a bigger role in determining exchange rates. US officials say China deliberately holds down its currency to boost exports, an accusation China denies. Instead, China says its currency policy is aimed at promoting economic stability. Policymakers on both sides also agreed to avoid “competitive devaluation” of their currencies under a broader deal. China stocks soared on growing optimistic bets on the world’s second-largest economy, Reuters reported. The Hang Seng Index on July 28 closed up 0.9% at 24,428.63 points at its highest since November 2010. The CSI300 index of the leading Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listings jumped 2.8%, while the Shanghai Composite Index gained 2.4% to 2,177.95 points. The jump put the onshore share indices squarely in the black for the first time this year after a disappointing recent performance. Bets are growing that China’s economy has turned a corner and investors expect more growthfriendly policies.
Politics and society
A Chinese oil rig has concluded exploration near the Paracel islands
in the South China Sea after discovering signs of oil and gas, Reuters reported, citing state media. Xinhua said the US$1 billion deepwater rig was scheduled to be relocated to what it called the Hainan Lingshui project operations. It had been operating for two months in waters also claimed by Vietnam. Chinese industry experts have said the rig had a good chance of finding enough gas to put the area into production. That would give China its first viable energy field in the disputed South China Sea. Shanghai was appointed the headquarters of a development bank being launched by BRICS emerging markets nations, Reuters reported. Brazil, China, India, Russia and South Africa signed off on the new institution, along with an emergency reserves fund, after two years of negotiations, a major step for the diverse group known more for its antiWestern rhetoric than coordinated action. New Development Bank, as it is officially called, will have starting capital of US$50 billion, with capital increased to US$100 billion.
less carriers have agreed to jointly form a telecommunications tower company with a registered capital RMB10 billion (US$1.6 billion), Reuters reported. China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom will have respective stakes of 40%, 30.1% and 29.9% in the tower company. China Communications Facilities Services Corp. will primarily engage in the construction, maintenance and operation of telecoms towers. The joint tower firm could reduce individual spending by the firms and allow them to share the infrastructure, as well as increasing each carrier’s network coverage and quality. Microsoft said it was under an anti-
Credit: Margnac
Credit: Boaz Guttman
NEWS ROUNDUP
Business
KFC parent Yum! Brands and McDonald’s apologized to customers after another food safety scandal broke in China, Reuters reported. Chinese regulators shut a local meat supplier after a TV report that showed workers picking up meat from a factory floor, as well as mixing meat beyond its expiration date with fresh meat. The companies said they immediately stopped using the supplier, Shanghai Husi Food, a unit of Aurora, Illinois-based OSI Group, and had switched to alternatives. They added that the factory served restaurants in the Shanghai area. China’s big three state-owned wire-
70%
Number of top officials ordered to quit corporate posts
Percentage of Chinese coal firms that are loss-making
200
$317bn China’s aggregate financing in June
trust investigation in China, as officials from the State Administration for Industry and Commerce visited some of its local offices in late July, Financial Times reported. Microsoft’s offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu were all the subject of unannounced visits from the SAIC, one of three Chinese antitrust bodies, Chinese media reported. The investigation is the latest setback for Microsoft in China, following a ban on central government purchases of its Windows 8 PC software, which was imposed in May over alleged concerns about security.
Percentage of Japanese surveyed who had confidence in Chinese President Xi Jinping
6% China Economic Review | August 2014
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Q & A : R O B OT I C S I N C H I N A
Automated labor As the factory of the world becomes its biggest consumer of goods, domestic and foreign firms are installing more robots to address China’s ongoing economic shift
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hina overtook Japan last year to become the w world’s largest market ffor industrial robots, aaccounting for 37,000 oof 180,000 units sold w worldwide, according tto a new report from tthe International Federation of Robotics. Arturo Baroncelli e IIFR president Arturo Baroncelli tells China B Economic Review why this is happening, where he thinks the industry is headed and argues that automation doesn’t necessarily lead to higher unemployment. Where do you see the future direction of the robotics industry in terms of sectors and applications? Historically there is one sector which is most important for robotics: Automotive. Many of these robots have been sold in the booming automotive market of China. But not only. Robots start to be used in another sector, one that we call general industry. Industry divides automotives and general industry, because automotives more or less is part of the market, and the rest is all the other sectors. Last year worldwide out of nearly 180,000 units sold, 70,000 were in automotives. The rest were electronics, rubber, plastics and so forth. China is today now the biggest robot consumer in the world and will also be tomorrow. Do you see the biggest applications of industrial robots in China continuing to be in the automotive sector, or will new sectors and applications be more prominent in the future? Both. Both will continue because as far as I know we have to consider the investment in new automotives plants. And they are continuing. But 10
China Economic Review | August 2014
“It’s not a question of choice. It would be like printing your magazine by hand instead of using other modern devices. So I think that automation will be the necessary choice ... when you introduce automation in robotics, it commands, it requires, it will dictate a sort of improvement of the whole process” at the same time the application in all other segments, well, China has a huge internal market that will continue to grow. There is also another important sector considering the development of robotics in China. In the world we have a very important figure which is robot density. What is the robot density? It is the number of robots per 10,000 employees. This average worldwide is 58, in countries like Korea, Japan, Sweden, Italy, Denmark where robotics started many, many years ago. So if we consider the value of China, its value today is around 20. What does it mean? It means there is a big room for improvement. So do you think the robot density will increase to match that of Japan and western countries in the future? I think the industrial robots will continue all over the world besides China, and I tell you why. Because robotics has a natural tendency to
diffuse into more segments. So segments which were not populated by robots yesterday, today can be populated by robots. Why? Because people, specialists, engineers, entrepreneurs, they understand that using robots in a specific new field will have better products and higher efficiency. So this special tendency of industrial robots to be applied in new application fields will constitute a boost for the forthcoming years. How do you think automation will affect China’s manufacturing industry? My opinion is that in many fields is there is no choice. No choice to go for automation because using robots is not an advantage but it’s your only choice. Let’s consider for example the automotive industry. In automotives the tool, not a tool, the tool for making cars is the robot. There is no alternative. So it’s not even a question of choice. It would be like printing your magazine by hand instead of using other modern devices. So I think that automation will be the necessary choice. My professional experience, I’m in the business since 1995, is that when you introduce automation in robotics, it commands, it requires, it will dictate a sort of improvement of the whole process. So automation is synonymous of higher quality and efficiency. Do you think that more reshoring will occur or do you think China’s manufacturing industry will become stronger with the use of robots? Robots can be used both in China and other countries. So in many cases, it depends, case by case. Where some companies have come to China or other countries only considering the labor costs, okay that was a choice. But other countries have decided to
ROBOTS MAKE WORK: Baroncelli says that counttries with high numbers of robots are creating more jobs, not losing them
automate, using robots in their own countries. In this case, since labor cost is not the basic reason to go east, they’ve been able to keep the production at home in their own countries. But there is also another fact. Many other countries using robots are using robots both in their own countries and also in China. Why? Because producing with robots in China is an advantage: Internal efficiency and cost and overall quality so I can think that many solutions can be considered, and in many cases, many international companies have both – robots in their home countries, Italy, Germany, United States, and in China because of the high demand of the Chinese nation. Foreign providers currently control 90% of the Chinese market and two-thirds of global robotics supply is dominated by four firms. What is holding Chinese robotics companies back and how can they break into this market? We have to see. The robotics market is like every other market, there are many players. I have seen both foreign companies and the Chinese suppliers, many, so it will be a question of
competitiveness, a question of quality of products. Just like every other field, like cars, ice cream, telephones. If the Chinese suppliers will be able to have competitive and good products, this will be okay for them. For the Chinese suppliers it’s a relatively new market so they will have to do better than the foreign companies. On the other hand I see that China has very good universities, very good engineers and managers, so it will be like every other market, a question of competitiveness. What will be the effect of increasing automation in the Chinese job market? With automation it means that first of all you have higher production, standardization of the production process, and this is very important because this is the basis of improving the quality, so you have these two things: Higher productivity and a better complete process. Because automation works very well where all the components that must be handled, assembled, welded, produced by the automative line are of good quality. If they are not of good quality, the automation has some troubles. So if you use automation you are forced to
Credit: ABB Media Relations
Q & A : R O B OT I C S I N C H I N A
improve the quality of your company. And I think that in every other part of the world, and in China it is the same story, if you are forced to automate you will have higher productivity and higher quality. But do you think it will affect the job market at all? If you look at the figures showing who are the biggest robot users of the world, it is China. The second is United States. In the last four years, we have seen a continuous increase in the use of robots in the United States. But what’s happened to employment in the United States? It increased as well. So we had an increase of robots and better employment rate. This was United States. Then, who is one of the biggest robot users of the world? Germany. Germany has a very good economy, unemployment rate very low, because they use a lot of robots. Japan as well. Republic of Korea as well. These five countries—China, Japan, Republic of Korea, United States and Germany—are the biggest robot users of the world. And they have in absolute terms, employment rate in check, very good, or they have decreased unemployment. China Economic Review | August 2014
11
Q&A : SUPER CITIES
Within touching distance Jeremy Kelly, Director, Global Research programs at real estate services firm JLL, discusses Shanghai’s rise as a “super city” and why he thinks Hong Kong isn’t going to make the cut
Y You talk about the cchanging hierarchy of ccities. Could you elaborate a bit about what o tthat entails? Basically we’ve identiB ffied three themes that aare driving that changiing hierarchy: Globaliization, urbanization Jeremy Kelly a and digitization. Those aare the three things that are turning the economic geography of the world on its head. Urbanization is really about cities in the emerging markets that are expanding through “flash urbanization,” as you sometimes call it. And so just by pure power of influence and size and dynamic, they are asserting themselves more on the world stage. You’re getting cities like Wuhan and Chengdu that only ten years ago were just not on the radar, but now are certainly moving into the top 100 cities. The second is globalization, and by that, what we’re finding is that there are certain cities that are benefitting from the increasing interconnectivity between cities both in terms of transport, but also in terms of the virtual connections between sets of people, such as London and Dubai. The third theme is what we call digitization, and that’s just a phrase that we use about how technology is making the world smaller. Are there any examples in China of this development? Well, I think it needs a density, it needs culture, and so I think Shanghai is probably the only example of a city that has the ingredients to start to build that culture, I would argue, at this stage. Because technology has often been about business parks, as you know - London’s Western Corridor and Silicon Valley, but now some of 12
China Economic Review | August 2014
“We’re not predicting the decline of Hong Kong by any means, but we just think that Shanghai has got that real momentum ... it is developing as the main financial hub of China” the real innovations are in downtown San Francisco, or downtown London, or Berlin, or Amsterdam, so it needs that cultural burst, which at the moment I only really see that in Shanghai. You were talking about the global city, and how you see that Shanghai has some of the things in place that can move towards that, so can you talk more about how Shanghai compares to its global peers? What we’ve observed, certainly from a real estate perspective, is the emergence of what we’re calling the super cities. And at the moment we can see four cities that are sticking their head above the parapet: London, Paris, New York and Tokyo. And they have largely four key ingredients. One is pure economic size and economic influence as financial trading hubs. They have very deep corporate bases and many headquarter locations. They have deep liquidity in terms of huge turnover of real estate, in terms of investment. All four of them are head and shoulders above the rest in terms of investment. And they account for about 20% of global commercial real estate investment, so huge concentration in these four cities. And then the final component of that is a large and diverse real estate stock.
Our thesis is that Shanghai has the ingredients to move to super city status, we’re saying by 2025. The reality is in the positions of these cities, is that it’s a steady progression, and therefore you’re not overnight going to see Shanghai being catapulted to super city status. Even in a place like China, it does take time to put in those ingredients. What we’re saying is there is real commitment by the central government to establish Shanghai as a truly global, international financial and trading hub. How about the development of the commercial real estate stock in Shanghai? It’s been interesting to listen to the debate recently about concerns about oversupply in Shanghai. But I think if you look at it over a longer-term horizon, essentially what Shanghai is doing is building the real estate infrastructures to move into its new skin as a super city. Thirteen million square meters by 2020 is what we’re saying here, of grade-A office stock. Compared to London and Paris and New York and Tokyo it’s not huge, and therefore cities like Shanghai will go through those cycles of supply-demand disequilibrium, but there is a long-term demand base that one can see that would allow that space to be occupied. It’s not like Dubai where you can see all these buildings with 40% vacancy rates, and although it’s a very dynamic city – I know I may be proved wrong – but you just really can’t see where the demand base is going to come from. Whereas in a place like Shanghai, it has the economic power and strength, and corporate dynamics to enable the space to be absorbed over a relatively short period of time. I’ve seen it elsewhere, and I think Shanghai has been through several cycles where its supply has looked uncomfortably
Q&A: SUPER CITIES
high, but in many transitional markets we often get vacancy rates of 20-30%. It’s a part of that evolutionary process. What are the implications of Shanghai becoming a super city? I think success breeds success. What we’re finding is that as a super city there is huge gravitational pull of people, capital and companies. So that will encourage economic growth. But I think, just to be a bit more provocative, there are downsides to that. As we’re seeing in London, there are inevitably issues of affordability, there are issues relating to social cohesion, congestion and diseconomies of scale. So I know I can speak for London about its contributing to economic success, and these cities are succeeding as a result of being truly open, but there are issues. Obviously Shanghai is the standout candidate from China, but given your China 50 report, what emerging cities do you see?
The two that I would highlight, and perhaps neither of them would be a huge surprise, would be Chengdu – which has certainly emerged from our China 50 work as the premier city outside of the top tier of Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. I think that’s very much driven by the openness and the deliberate policy of Chengdu to attract multinational corporations. And so it’s a much more international city than others. It also has that livability component to it. The other one is now Wuhan. And so from our City Momentum Index [published in January], Wuhan was fifth globally in terms of momentum, and what’s driving that one is the official recognition about central China. It’s already happened on the coast, it’s already happened in western China as a result of the Go West policy. Of the four big global cities you mentioned earlier, Hong Kong wasn’t in there?
Hong Kong is not in those five cities, and that is contentious. We’ve actually created a simple model which looks at economic power, corporate base, real estate stock and investment volumes. That’s where the four cities have come from, and Shanghai is moving up there. Hong Kong falls just outside of that. I think that we’re not asserting that it will become a super city. It certainly has many of the ingredients – it’s an international trade hub – and we’re not predicting the decline of Hong Kong by any means, but we just think that Shanghai has got that real momentum. So I would say if you look at comparisons Hong Kong does have many similarities as an international trading hub with the Singapores, New Yorks and Londons. But what Shanghai has is I think it will be developing as the main financial and trading hub of mainland China, and therefore has got that extra boost. But I certainly don’t think Hong Kong is going to suffer.
China Economic Review | August 2014
13
Q & A : B I TCO I N D E B I T C A R D
Bitcoin goes plastic The digital currency may have fallen in value as Chinese speculators fled the market but one Hong Kong exchange is betting that consumers will want to spend it in stores
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sia, in particular Hong Kong and mainland C China, has been a quick aadopter of the bitcoin d digital currency. Early headlines focused on h tthe speculative buying of C Chinese investors that d drove bitcoin prices up Ken Lo tto record levels late last yyear. Prices have since eased off by about 40% as the initial surge of speculative buying dried up, but acceptance of the currency among consumers, if not necessarily central banks, is steadily rising. Bitcoin ATMs have popped up in Shanghai and Hong Kong and more and more retailers are accepting them. In mid-June Hong Kong-based ANX, one of the world’s largest bitcoin exchanges, launched the world’s first reloadable prepaid bitcoin debit card, which could potentially spark the next wave of consumer activity with the crypto currency. In an inter-
view with China Economic Review, ANX CEO Ken Lo explains how the debit card works and how it removes a substantial barrier for bitcoin users by allowing them to use bitcoins in traditional credit card payment systems. Why did you launch a bitcoin debit card? We believe prepaid cards will play an integral role in a bitcoin consumer’s day-to-day financial life. As a market leader we felt it was important to go beyond current offerings in the marketplace and bring something new and innovative to our customers. Although the merchant adoption is increasing daily, there are still a lot of places where bitcoins are not accepted. We wanted to allow our bitcoin users to be able to use their bitcoins on a traditional payment network that has 30 million merchants worldwide. Can you explain how the process, from applying for the card to loading and paying, works?
The ANX Bitcoin Debit cards are only offered to our customers. Users must first register and verify their account on ANX before applying for the debit card … Once they receive their card, they send a request to the ANX support team to load funds from their ANX account to the debit card. We will be releasing a fully automated solution in our following release. The card is then useable in over 30 million merchants worldwide through a traditional payment network. How are a card holder’s bitcoins exchanged into useable currency? Funds can be loaded onto the ANX debit card via bitcoin or in any of the 10 major currencies that ANX supports. The stored currency on the ANX debit card is in US dollars. This card is then useable at merchants and ATMs worldwide that don’t support bitcoins because the card will be debited in US dollars. Can card holders convert the balance on their cards back into bitcoins? No.
Credit: Niall Kennedy
Which card payment processing providers are you working with? Although it is public knowledge we are not allowed to market publicly the payment provider.
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WELCOME TO THE CLUB: Despite reservations among central bankers, a growing number of retailers both online and offline are accepting bitcoin
China Economic Review | August 2014
Where do you expect your biggest user base to be in the short-to-medium term? People who need to travel a lot, and students who study abroad. This card can use bitcoins to purchase items through conventional payment systems such as online retailers or physical retail stores. Cash withdrawals can be performed via an extensive ATM network spanning over 200 countries. The debit cards are linked to our ANX bitcoin exchange account and
Q & A : B I TCO I N D E B I T C A R D
bitcoin wallet. This integration does not exist today. The debit card currently supports the US dollar. Are there plans to add the yuan? The debit card currently supports the US dollar only as the base currency. However, we are working on adding more currencies later. Can the card be used to make payments in mainland China? Yes. Can people in mainland China apply for your card? No. China is one of the world’s biggest bitcoin markets. If the debit card takes off there, what could that mean for global acceptance? A debit card would definitely be a plus for global acceptance. However, we have no plans for that region right now.
How does this debit card promote the acceptance of bitcoin among retailers if the onus for conversion is placed on a service provider like ANX? By having an ANX bitcoin debit card, bitcoin users now have another way for spending their bitcoins at a retailer that doesn’t accept bitcoins because the card is debited in US dollar. ANX is not a traditional financial services company. How are you able to operate a debit card and how can users be sure that it will be accepted by retailers? This is because our payment provider is one of the largest payment processors in the world. Part of the appeal for bitcoin users is anonymity. Surely that ends with a physical debit card as transactions can be much more easily traced? We have no anonymous users on our
HOW TO SPEND IT: Lo says ANX wants to improve acceptance of bitcoins among consumers
system. All of our users are verified. The one advantage to our ANX bitcoin debit card is now you are able to buy that surprise gift from Amazon to your significant other using bitcoins, whereas previously you had no alternative because Amazon does not accept bitcoins. What interest are you getting from retailers in Hong Kong? Hong Kong being a world financial capital has all the right ingredients for driving and leading innovation in the bitcoin industry. More and more merchants and people are accepting bitcoin as a payment method. We are glad that we are a part of it.
Credit: Imaginechina
How closely is this system able to follow bitcoin’s constantly changing exchange rate? The cards will be loaded at the market rate and thus will not be fluctuating.
How is the card integrated into existing payment networks? Our payment processor is global and can process in 30 million merchants worldwide and can access an extensive ATM network in 200 countries. If holders can use the card at a regular point of sale, is there some kind of integration that needs to happen at the merchant? Nope, the whole benefit to the ANX bitcoin debit card is that it is debited through traditional POS systems and there’s no change that has to happen on the merchant side. ANX provides all the integration to get the card to be accepted globally. China Economic Review | August 2014
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OP-ED: CHINA AND THE WORLD
Building the BRICS Bank A look at how Beijing will use the New Development Bank to weave a web around Washington and further its economic diplomacy goals
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China Economic Review | August 2014
That means ensuring access to markets and resources necessary for the economic growth that raises living standards and legitimises its rule. But it also means“making the world safe for authoritarianism,” in the words of Aaron Friedberg, former deputy assistant for national security affairs and director of policy planning for Vice President Dick Cheney. The Party’s principle threat in this respect is the international preponderance of the US. The world’s most powerful country has a deep-rooted hostility to one-party rule and makes no secret of its wish to undermine the Party’s monopoly, so neutralising the threat posed by US dominance of international institutions– and the liberal democratic norms this underpins – is imperative as a matter of self-defence. Beijing articulates this as ‘opposing hegemony’ – pragmatism dressed up as principle. Another explicit tenet of Chinese foreign policy, however, is “never to
claim leadership.” Beijing recognises the risks it would run in directly challenging the US and the established world order. The fate of past rising powers – particularly the Soviet Union and Germany (twice) – is unlikely to be far from the Politburo’s collective mind. Much as it fears the potential for Western ideological influence to undermine its regime from within, it also recognises the potential for destructive international rivalry to become so costly that it fatally weakens the Party’s position at home. Instead of confronting the established US-led global order directly, Beijing may hope to work around it, in effect “surrounding the cities from the countryside” as Mao Zedong’s guerrillas did during their revolutionary wars. China’s post-Mao economic development path offers another analogy: Reformist leaders did not begin by trying to break up the powerful state industrial sector, but rather encour-
SOMETHING TO BE PROUD OF?: BRICS nations seemingly only share frustration towards the West’s control of global institutions, but perhaps thier new development bank will bring them closer together
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he leaders of the BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China R aand South Africa – oon 15 July signed the ‘‘Fortaleza Declaration’ ccreating a new international development n bank. Initial capital of b Benjamin Charlton US$50 billion, eventuU aally rising to US$100 billion, will make the New Development Bank (NDB) a player on the scale of the US$223 billion World Bank. Unlike the World Bank – with 188 participants but dominated by the US, Europe and Japan – the terms of membership are pointedly egalitarian: Equal capital contributions and a portioning out of key posts– a Brazilian chairing the board of directors, a Russian chairing the board of governors, a head office in China and a “regional centre” in South Africa. China could easily fund an institution the size of the NDB singlehanded. The China Development Bank, a key policy lender, alone has foreign currency loans of more than US$200 billion. So why would Beijing commit to a scheme that gives it less control over how its capital is used and ties it down by the need to reach consensus with some of the most fiercely independent (and in Russia’s case openly truculent) of the world’s economic powers? And why should it stake resources on what is ostensibly a redundant and unpromising initiative based on the flimsiest of collective identities? One possibility is that Beijing’s participation is part of a broader strategy. It is a widespread and safe assumption that the ultimate motive behind Chinese foreign policy is the need to defend and bolster the Communist Party’s grip on power at home.
OP-ED: CHINA AND THE WORLD
aged new, entrepreneurial businesses to “grow outside the plan.” Only once these had become the mainstay of the economy did the leadership gradually begin to dismantle the apparatus of the planned economy. Much commentary has described the NBD as a rival to the World Bank, but Beijing is unlikely to frame it this way. The impression that China is mobilising a rival camp under its own leadership is precisely what Beijing wants to avoid, because it would fuel the sort of “Cold War thinking” of which Beijing so frequently accuses Washington. This may also explain why Beijing, despite being economically in a league of its own among the BRICS, accepts the constraints of a structure in which all members have an equal say. An ostensibly egalitarian initiative appears less threatening and more legitimate than a unilateral or clearly China-led one, presenting Beijing’s agenda as part of a greater cause and parrying criticism that its international initiatives are self-interested bids to enhance its own power. The initiatives China promotes – such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and more recently the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) – do not demand exclusive allegiance, and it presents them as supplements to existing international institutions rather than alternatives.This moves in line with what Beijing calls the “historical trend” of global integration–but towards a world order of more diverse and decentralised international governance structures that does not have the West at its core. The strategy of diluting rather than confronting US influence on global governance would leave ample scope for different groupings to focus on different issues. In this context, the truism that the BRICS have little in common in terms of culture, demography, history, political systems or wealth is beside the point: They share a need for development funding. Other matters fall outside the NDB’s remit, and can be dealt with by other institutions that may or may
not involve the BRICS as a group. Championing a number of different groups with different memberships might even help Beijing cultivate the impression that it does not seek to create a rival camp. Institutions such as the BRICS, the SCO or the CICA allow cooperation on issues where members’ interests converge and need not signify broader affiliation. In development funding, China’s needs sometimes converge with the BRICS’s; on counter-terrorism, they converge with the SCO’s; on piracy, they converge with those of most maritime trading powers. There is no reason why membership of these different issue-specific groupings, each with a narrow focus of activity, should coincide. In the multi-layered world order Beijing may be envisioning, potential for spill-over from one narrow sphere of activity to another would be limited. There is therefore little promise that cooperation on, for example, the NDB will ease tensions in other spheres, such as the border dispute between China and India or New Delhi’s fears vis-a-vis China’s growing maritime power. Conversely, the limited focus of each of Beijing’s plurilateral initiatives bodes well for its commitment to making them successful on their own narrow terms, despite a lack of deep affinity between their participants. Beijing’s plurilateral initiatives are tentative and fragile, and do not sit easily with China’s increasingly high-handed behaviour towards its near neighbours. But if enough new links are fastened, the result would be far from the ‘walled world’ that Mark Leonard envisaged as China’s global goal. Rather, it would be a ‘worldwide web’ of slender threads thickly woven – without the US spider pulling the strings from the centre. Benjamin Charlton is the Senior Analyst for East Asia at the global analysis and advisory firm Oxford Analytica
China Economic Review | August 2014
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O P - E D : C H I N A’ S E N E R G Y H U N T
Drilling with friends The next wave of China’s overseas energy M&A is likely to involve strategic partnerships with majors and independent international oil companies
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utbound foreign direct investment by C Chinese energy comp panies began to gain momentum in the eearly 2000s when large C Chinese state-owned eenterprises, or SOEs, sstepped up their search David M. Blumental ffor natural resources ooverseas. As China’s ccontinued economic ggrowth drove increased domestic demand for d eenergy,Chinese energgy companies began tto look overseas to ssecurenew reserves and llong-term energy supp plies.This international p pursuit was led pred dominantly by China’s Hon C. Ng llargest energy compan nies: China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) and China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation, more commonly known as Sinopec. While China’s SOEs operate as commercial enterprises similar to their counterparts among international oil companies, their overseas acquisitions do contribute to China’s energy security and the SOEs have benefited from Chinese government policies promoting outbound investment in energy and natural resources as well as from export credit and similar financial support – again not unlike their counterparts among US and other international oil companies. Chinese government leaders have also given support to overseas energy and natural resources investments during visits to energy-producing countries in Africa, South America and elsewhere. According to data published by the Chinese government, by end of 18
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2012 China’s oil imports reached 57% of its demand. Both Chinese energy demand as well as imports as a proportion of overall supply havecontinued to increase since that time. Meanwhile imports of natural gas by pipeline and in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG) have likewise continued to increase. To meet this growing demand, it is expected that Chinese energy companies will continue to seek opportunities to acquire and develop overseas oil and gas assets. Yet the manner in which they go about selecting and acquiring new assets is evolving. Chinese energy companies now place greater emphasis on efficiency and return on investment whereas in the past they had focused on acquiring overseas reserves and production barrels. There is also a greater focus on improving integration of assets as well as portfolio management. As Chinese energy companies look at new opportunities they are likely to become more selective and strategic in the deals they choose to pursue.
Going out into the world China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001 spurred the country’s continued economic growth, and with it increased demand for energy and natural resources both as an input for export-oriented, often energy-intensive manufacturing as well as to fuel the new cars and other products for the rising urban middle class. Early transactions tended to be acquisitions of oil and gas assets from smaller companies, often one-off transactions and relative to the complex transactions of recent years quite small. The sellers and deal counterparties were often smaller, privatelyheld upstream companies rather than publicly-listed global players of similar size to the Chinese SOEs. In a few instances where SOEs attempted to pursue higher-value M&A activity they were pre-empted by international oil companies exercising rights of first refusal. The global economic slowdown that ensued in late 2008 created opportunities for Chinese energy com-
NEW HORIZONS: China’s hunt for energy will take it to new places it can't explore alone
TEAMWORK: Where once Chinese oil majors bought production rights to drill alone, deals will increasingly be about equity stakes and working with partners
panies with their ready access to cash to pursue larger, more complex deals. With a smaller universe of potential buyers and often under pressure to monetize assets, international oil companies now viewed Chinese energy companies as attractive potential buyers for negotiated deals and as strategic joint venture partners. In the past six years,Chinese energy companies have completed a series of multibillion dollar, sophisticated transactions with and opposite large independent oil and gas companies and integrated oil majors, including takeovers of publicly-listed companies, large asset acquisitions and complex joint ventures for the development of deep water blocks offshore Brazil, of unconventional shale plays in North America,and of LNG liquefaction and export projects in Australia, Canada and Mozambique.CNOOC’s successful acquisition of Nexen, a publiclylisted Canadian oil and gas company, for US$15.1 billion represents the largest Chinese outbound M&A deal to date in any sector, following Sinopec’s successful acquisition of Addax Petroleum in 2009. Having completed this series of large acquisitions and joint ventures, the focus has now shifted to integration and operation of acquired assets as well as to the development of experienced management and
“We expect to see large Chinese energy companies continuing to pursue complex acquisitions, strategic partnerships with majors and independent international oil companies and other transactions potentially including partial selldowns and divestitures as they rationalize portfolios" technical personnel and improving efficiency and return on investment. At the same time, there has been a corresponding slowdown in new acquisition activity. This slowdown is likely to be only a short hiatus, however, and Chinese energy companies are likely to resume new acquisition activity in due course, but now with a view to being more selective and
Credit: Imaginechina
O P - E D : C H I N A’ S E N E R G Y H U N T
more strategic in the opportunities they elect to pursue. What happens next? We expect to see large Chinese energy companies continuing to pursue complex acquisitions, strategic partnerships with majors and independent international oil companies and other transactions potentially including partial selldowns and divestitures as they rationalize their portfolios. At the same time, we expect to see more private (non-SOE) companies and private equity funds backed by both private and SOE limited partners becoming active in cross-border energy transactions. Successful integration of assets and operations around the globe and the development of experienced management and technical teams that can bridge cultural and language gaps will be an ongoing task for Chinese energy companies. David M. Blumental is a partner in Latham & Watkins Hong Kong office. He serves as Global Co-chair of the firm’s Oil & Gas Industry Group. Hon C. Ng is an associate in the firm’s Hong Kong office focusing on cross-border M&A and finance transactions.
China Economic Review | August 2014
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FIT IT ALL IN: Packing cities with people, factories and jobs isn’t a smart way to grow. An alternative known as city clusters could be the answer for China
Cluster formation FOR A BETTER FUTURE URBAN ENVIRONMENT CHINA NEEDS TO BREAK UP ITS MEGACITIES
COVER STORY: MEGA CITIES
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Credit: Imaginechina
arely two decades ago China was known as the “Kingdom of Bicycles” and cars were a rare sight on the streets. Now there is hardly any room to park. The likes of Shanghai and Guangzhou have morphed into giant urban centers as millions of new arrivals flooded in to pursue economic opportunities. They are widely touted as examples of the new Asian megacity. As China reaches the limits of its current export and investment-based growth model, its biggest cities have also begun to reach a developmental limit. The megacity no longer appears to be a sustainable path forward. Changing track will not be easy, but plans are already underfoot to break existing megacities up into clusters with a central hub surrounded by smaller cities. Across the country, in Shanghai and Suzhou, in Beijing and Tianjin, and in the Pearl River Delta around Guangdong and Shenzhen, cities are linking up, clustering together into urban units of a truly grand scale – approaching and potentially exceeding 100 million people. By building stronger physical and economic links with their surrounding areas big cities can relocate industry, jobs and people, making them less dense and more efficient. The formation of these clusters is not simply the future of the urban landscape, but the future of China’s development. Megacity vs. cluster The sheer scale of this phenomenon is dizzying, to be sure, and not a little bit confusing. The terms megacity and cluster cities are often used interchangeably to describe what is going on, but in fact each has a distinctive meaning. Those differences are crucial to China’s development. “Megacity” is a hefty term. Written in proper, that big capital “M” imparts a swagger commenChina Economic Review | August 2014
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COVER STORY: MEGA CITIES
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other smaller cities as its spokes. The model allows for more diversity as each city remains an individual player, and can bring its complementary strengths to bear regionally through smart integration. This geographical huddling has major implications. “We think of clusters as the most sustainable form of urbanization,” said Woetzel. “In all ways.”
DROP THE EGO: Cities should be built for the people who live in them and not subjected to the sometimes irrational whims of plannins officials and overzealous developers and their showy projects
surate with the cities themselves. It conjures up an image of towering skyscrapers by the dozens, hundreds of kilometers of subway track, people and cars filling the streets. Big money, big opportunity… big smog, too. But like most buzzwords, it’s a bit more fanciful than descriptive. The United Nations officially defines a megacity as any municipality with over 10 million residents – an arbitrary but convenient benchmark. However, even this doesn’t account for how municipal boundaries are drawn. For example, it’s easy to be wowed by Shanghai’s 24 million people versus the eight million in New York City. But it is often omitted that Shanghai covers an area five times that of the Big Apple that includes large swathes of farmland. The broader New York Metropolitan Statistical Area, essentially greater New York, has a population of 19.9 million. Yet nobody considers New York as fitting into the megacity category. 22
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“Everybody has a different definition” of a megacity, says Jonathan Woetzel, co-chair of the Urban China Initiative and director at consultancy McKinsey. “I think 10 million on up is reasonably accepted as a megacity, but we may end up changing that definition over time.” Particularly, he added, if the population of cities in the average continues to push higher. According to the China Urban Sustainability Index, an annual research project carried out by UCI and the McKinsey Global Institute, known as cluster cities might be more appropriate for China. “In the first report, we contrasted two versions of urbanization: Concentrated megacities and clusters,” said Woetzel. “We concluded that the cluster form made a bit more sense … and that has been borne out [by the data].” Clusters, as he refers to them, form with at least one very large city as a central hub, surrounded by many
Best laid plans Cities across China are a curious mix of careful planning, thoughtful consideration and a whole lot of happenstance in between. The vast urban regions of today are the result of planners forging ahead with their ideas and then reacting to change. Most of the big urban centers we see in China now are the direct result of the opening up of the country in the 1970s and the productive tumult that followed. The Pearl River Delta manufacturing hub is a prime example. Before 1949, a huge portion of Chinese goods were sent through Guangzhou and on to Hong Kong for export. Once that route closed the need for a new one became apparent, setting in motion the birth of the port city and factory hub of Shenzhen. “15 years ago, there was no Shenzhen,” said Ma Xiangming, chief planner at the Urban and Rural Planning and Design Institute. “When Deng Xiaoping opened up policy in Shenzhen… it meant that things could only be sent to Shenzhen. For ten years things concentrated in Shenzhen.” Money flowed, factories were built, more people followed. Soon enough the city was expanding. In 1990, the highway system in the region was very underdeveloped, so Shenzhen took it upon itself to begin correcting that. “The city itself planned its own road system, and then the central government connected it and formed the regional highway system,” Ma said. “So it comes two ways: Bottom-up, and top-down.” Shenzhen is not something that occurred naturally. It was created, and then it grew. The newly built highways encouraged it further and
COVER STORY: MEGA CITIES
the population exploded. Guangdong grew. Dongguan, the third big city, become the place to go as a young migrant worker fresh from the countryside. The region became what we know it as: China’s engine, the world’s factory. “If there is no new China, there is no Shenzhen,” Ma said. It would seem the same is true vice versa. The current planning situation is both proactive and reactive – bottom-up and top-down. China’s urban population surpassed 50% a few years ago and now it is the explicit goal of the central government to keep the trend going. By 2020, 60% of the population will be in urban areas, rising to 70% by 2030, according to a new urbanization blueprint released by Beijing in May. As Ma conceded, there is no way to block the fire hose of migration, whether you plan for it or not. The question now is figuring out the best way to turn villagers into urbanites. Rethinking the economic model Huge cities tend to conjure mostly negative images of sprawl, density, overpopulation, crime, social inequality and all the other downsides of modern urban living. These cities might be economic centers, but they are tough and rank poorly in terms of sustainable living. That doesn’t always have to be the case. The China Urban Stability Index 2013 shows that most Chinese cities have in fact improved their level of sustainability in recent years, and that the top 10 best performing are located mostly in the coastal or eastern regions. Sustainability is positively correlated with increased population size, density, migration and foreign investment. As urban conurbations grow public services and utilities scale up quickly, in effect reducing the negative footprints of inhabitants. Water and heating are provided in tight networks over shorter distances while waste collection is more focused and therefore efficient. While some Chinese urban dwellers continue to dispose of their rubbish in public streets, armies of cleaners are there to remove
it quickly; nobody burns refuse in open pits or lights crop fires that pollute the skies. Still, cities can only be green and clean up to a certain point. “There is a limit to how far one can go without rethinking the economic model,” said Woetzel. According to the CUSI report, the “turning point” where big cities outgrow their efficiency comes when the population tops 4.5 million, density reaches over 8,000 people per square kilometer and migrants make up over 30% of residents. Places like Shanghai and Tianjin went past that point long ago. Over the next 15 years or so more cities will join the ranks of giant urban areas. In order for them to be workable and successful, planners will need to improve how they are put together. The cluster cities paradigm is, at its heart, a way of rethinking the economic model. Many of the other factors generally considered necessary for sustainability are more or less related to that central principle. In this model a big city acts as the main hub for administrative functions, capital and talent with a few core industries such as services. Meanwhile smaller outer-lying cities develop their own economic fields such as high-tech or industrial production. This allows for industry, services, jobs and people to be spread out but still easily connected. A traditional megacity, by contrast, typically encompasses all functions within itself. In our April issue, China Economic Review argued that Shanghai cannot hope to be both a service center rooted in finance while at the same time maintain its industrial base if it ever wants to get rid of its pollution problem and enjoy a healthier growth. Suzhou, a small city to the west of Shanghai that has for all intents and purposes become a distant suburb, is attempting to create its own specialism while also drawing on its proximity to China’s economic hub.“You have to leverage the resources in this region. I wouldn’t say [Suzhou is] trying to be different, but trying to be
different in very specific segments,” said Joe Zhou, head of research for East China at real estate services firm JLL. Suzhou is still carving out its economic identity, but Zhou says it’s already good at semiconductors and pharmaceuticals. The aim is to keep on attracting high-tech industry as low value-added industries such as textiles move away. The planned direct linkage of Shanghai and Suzhou’s municipal subway systems will help to do the actual leveraging by making travel between the two even more convenient. The goal, Zhou says, is to use Suzhou’s cheaper land and rent prices along with the more livable environment to lure businesses and residents away from Shanghai. As part of a bid to create that more livable environment, Suzhou created the Suzhou Industrial Park, which helped it claim the Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize, an award that recognizes leadership in sustainable development. Because of the pending connection, the move is all that more attractive for people and businesses. Zhou notes that several financial services firms have opened offices in the SIP in the past year. “We use the words ‘Greater Shanghai’ like ‘Greater London’ to describe this coming together of the two cities, said Zhou. The Pearl River Delta Into One project, which is integrating Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Dongguan and six other satellite cities, essentially has the same aim. As Ma explained, a family could live in one of smaller cities and work where they can find the best jobs. Theoretically speaking, a husband could commute to Dongguan, the wife to Guangzhou, and both return at night back to their home in the middle. They would also be shopping mostly where they live, and consuming social services there as well – the burden on different systems, such as medical care and education, will be more thinly spread throughout the region. Indeed, part of the “turning point” problem lies in that the central megacities have been overwhelmed with increasing China Economic Review | August 2014
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COVER STORY: MEGA CITIES
populations faster than public such as hospitals and schools can keep up. In the north of China, the Bohai Economic Rim Project is integrating Beijing, Tianjin, several surrounding cities and Hebei province – well over 100 million people. Beijing is taking an aggressive stance when comes to tackling the “turning points” and endemic pollution. Not only are the authorities looking to push out industrial production from the nation’s capital but also to send up to five million residents into nearby areas to de-clutter a congested city. For a city that’s seen its population grow by two-thirds since the turn of the millennium, that would be a huge trend reversal. Clusters drive innovation Bringing lesser-tier cities into the game has some unique advantages. Not least among them is the time and space for more sensible urban planning, and even a little experimentation – they are often where the biggest improvements can be made. One such example is Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang and the largest city in western China. The region has been earmarked for major investment by Beijing to exploit is abundant natural resources and strategic location on the old Silk Road. The authorities in that region have been working with the “Future Megacities” scheme established by the German government in 2004 to fund research in emerging giant cities around the globe in the hope they might influence sustainable urban design. Urumqi has a population of around 3.2 million and 10 million square meters of construction is currently taking place, equal to half of the new construction in Germany at this time, according to Bernd Franke, an environmental planning and assessment expert, who worked on the Urumqi project for the German government. Franke says the project had several successes. He his team found a willing ear and collaborator in the local government, and a city of the right size to affect change. They contributed to the local government’s decision 24
China Economic Review | August 2014
OVERCROWDED: China’s urban areas may well need to be dense to pack in the millions of people who live within them but they can be built in clusters instead of on top of one another
to recently convert the entire city’s heating system from coal to natural gas – a feat accomplished in just nine months – and the decision earlier this year to increase new housing efficiency standards by 25%. In term of new ideas, Franke says that sustainable housing has been the most promising. With extreme winters as cold as minus 30 degrees centigrade a huge amount of energy is required for heating. The construction boom created the opportunity for the “Passive House,” which Franke says utilizes modern design and materials to achieve better insulation. “Passive housing can be done in a very demanding climate, in a very poor area and be done quickly,” Franke said, crediting that proof-ofconcept with the landing of their next passive house project in Tianjin. That spreading of innovation is crucial. Urumqi is on track to become another major city in China. The fact that it is implementing policies
focused on sustainability early on in its development could set it on a good path for the future. Nevertheless its rise also points to the problems other emerging centers will face. Competing ambitions Planning and building China’s future urban environment is no easy task. Regardless of the research into and awareness of urbanization, sustainability and other related issues, there is a lack of a unified national vision for how to move forward and many competing priorities. Back in Xinjiang, Franke and his team came across a PVC plant that used coal as feedstock. Franke says that switching to petroleum-based fuels would cost a bit more but curb carbon emissions significantly. “I said [to the CEO], what if the government banned PVC production from coal?” recalls Franke. “He said, ‘Then I would have to find something else to do with my coal.’” Many industries
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COVER STORY: MEGA CITIES
are vertically integrated in this way and not easily changed. Perhaps more important is the issue of communication and coordinated planning between the central government and the many local governments. Right now, Urumqi is the proposed location of a new coal gasification plant that will generate cleaner natural gas to be piped to Beijing. Coal gasification is enormously dirty, so much so that its central location in Urumqi would effectively cancel out the gains brought by more efficient housing standards and the conversion of city heating to natural gas. In this sense, the project seems to make little sense. Nevertheless, the powers that be are pushing for it very hard to boost the economy. Communication and disputes are also a problem at lower levels. In the Pearl River Delta, all the constituent cities and the provincial government recognize that integrated rail connections are the future of the region.
What they cannot agree on is who exactly will build what. According to Ma, every city wants its own subway system while the provincial government prefers a broader, integrated network. Space is already extremely constricted so there’s simply no room to build both, and even if there was doubling-over construction would be a waste of resources. The Pearl River Delta already has four international airports all within 50 kilometers of each other. Beijing’s more radical plan has an entirely different set of problems. The first is challenging nearby local governments to fall in line with its plan for fairer regional tax systems and social infrastructure. The second is moving all those factories and their migrant workers away, which is a bit more intractable. In the short term, it would lessen pressure on Beijing’s infrastructure and alleviate some of the nasty pollution for which it has become infamous. In the longer term, that’s less of a solution to pollution than simply moving the problem elsewhere. Crucially, not every city is a growing metropolis or located close enough to other emerging cities to form the big clusters that would give the best returns on integration. Despite its strategic location, Urumqi sits many kilometers from any other big urban area – one of the reasons planners in Beijing are content to send coal gasification and other dirty industry its way. These cities could very well turn out to be the big losers in the game. “The reality is that we will have a portfolio of outcomes,” said Woetzel. “If you have an isolated city, you have a failure. The risk is blowing a hole in the balance sheet of cities.” With the mounting indebtedness of local governments a major risk for China’s financial stability, that could spell disaster. A blueprint based on clusters Challenges notwithstanding, the integration of cities into clusters is clearly the way forward. The future of China as a dynamic country now hinges on moving to higher value-
added industries, solving pollution problems and creating space for the comfortable and growing middle classes to build a consumption-based economy. Bunching cities together is integral to this process. “Clusters work because they capture economies of scale,” Woetzel said, adding that, “a cluster city is very specific. It goes to one specific product and dominates.” In other words: Specialize, divide and conquer. That’s what Suzhou is trying to do by leaning on the resources and global connectedness of nearby Shanghai. That’s what the cities in the Pearl River Delta can all do, while sharing skilled workers in a big, connected regional pool. Another aspect is the ease of experimenting at reduced risk, and then sharing what works. “Regardless of where it is derived, what matters is dissemination… and that starts with the cluster,” said Woetzel. “If Xintiandi [an upscale shopping district] works in Shanghai, then we see it in other cities. It goes to other cities in the cluster and then beyond.” Similarly, if a city tries something and falls flat on its face, it isn’t out there all alone. Part of the point of linking up with the big city is that the big city can step in if there is a problem. There are resources to fall back on. All of the above are more than what would traditionally be considered a megacity can handle as a single entity. There is no space left, local resources and infrastructure are overwhelmed, and living standards are sacrificed. The cluster lets the largest city act as a center of gravity for a diverse system of satellite areas that divide urban tasks. To make a rough analogy: Ten families in ten different houses is resource inefficient; ten families in one giant room is chaos; ten families living in an apartment complex pools group needs and preserves individuality – that’s what the cluster does on a grand scale. Ultimately, the cluster enables people to keep doing what they’ve been doing for the past 30 years: Envisioning a richer future. China should embrace this model. China Economic Review | August 2014
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B U S I N E S S : CO M M E R C I A L D R O N E S
AERIAL DELIVERY: Commercial drones that can deliver pacels are still waiting for permission to fly in China
Flying parcels Commercial drones are the latest hot product in the technology world and China is emerging as a leading developer and user of unmanned aerial devices
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rones have flown into public view in China in the past fortnight as weapons in the war on pollution. The environment ministry recently employed dronemounted infrared cameras to monitor and collect data on industrial polluters in the north of the country. This is just one example of the growing number of non-military applications for drones domestically. Increasingly, these unmanned aerial vehicles are being used for commercial purposes in fields including aerial photography, video and even logistics. According to some estimates, the market for commercial drones is now worth a few hundred
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China Economic Review | August 2014
million renminbi annually and growing fast. But Chinese companies are not only buying drones: They are designing and producing commercial units for sale at home and abroad. Yet despite entrepreneurs showing a knack for drone production, design and commercial application, government regulations and market forces may forestall a quick takeoff for an industry that is rapidly capturing the attention of the business world. In June spying drones swept through the airspace of three provinces home to major steel and coalmining industries on patrol for polluters. Roughly a quarter of the firms
had exceeded air pollution limits according to an announcement from the Ministry of Environmental Protection. Hebei Iron & Steel Group, the country’s top steel producer, was named and shamed for egregious emissions. Government ministries aren’t the only ones with eyes in the skies. Drones, many of them designed by Chinese entrepreneurs, have begun to dot the airspace above China’s cities and countryside to capture airborne vistas on film where only heavily regulated helicopters once hovered. MF Vision, a Shanghaibased company specializing in remote-control aerial photogra-
phy and videography, boasts clients including the BBC, Fuji TV and a number of Chinese provincial and municipal television stations. Many drone fleets increasingly include craft designed and produced by two companies from South China, XAircraft and DJI Innovations. Their growing successes at home and abroad are signs that local firms have the chops to thrive in this booming field within the commercial drone sector. Director of Guangzhou-based XAircraft, Justin Gong, shoots footage for the Phoenix TV news network using a drone of his company’s own design. Gong claimed in a media interview that his company could sell 350 units in China a day. Given that the cheapest model offered on XAircraft’s Taobao store is priced at about RMB3,000 (US$485), that’s a potential RMB1.05 million in daily sales. Meanwhile, Shenzhen-based DJI Innovations’ Phantom Vision 2 has become an industry darling in the US. Small enough to hold with one hand and simple to start up out of the box, it has garnered seemingly universal praise from drone and photography enthusiasts, and lowers the bar to entry for aerial imagery still further with smartphone compatibility. DJI “is in the first wave of 21st century Chinese companies that we are all going to be dealing with,” the CEO of one industry rival recently told Bloomberg Businessweek. “They are executing flawlessly.” While commercial drones are currently mostly used to shoot photos and video, enterprising delivery companies have been trying out aerial craft in a bid to find solutions to China’s logistical bottlenecks. If allowed to develop, this could be the big trigger for growth in commercial drones. The country is the world’s largest e-commerce market, with 302 million online shoppers and a transaction volume of RMB1.85 trillion in 2013, according to an official from the commerce ministry. Estimates suggest internet sales could top RMB4.2 trillion by 2020. SF
Credit: Imaginechina
B U S I N E S S : CO M M E R C I A L D R O N E S
Express, the biggest delivery firm in China, last September tested an aerial delivery drone in the city of Dongguan. An upscale bakery in Shanghai even sought last year to deliver cakes by air. But as so often with emerging technologies in China, companies move more quickly than regulators, who instinctively slam on the breaks when faced with uncertainty. The bakery’s test was halted by local authorities; unmanned aircraft had to be approved by the civil aviation authority before being used for business, they said. Zhang Qizhun, director of the aviation law committee of the Beijing Bar association, told South China Morning Post last August that civilian drones “face very strict regulations on the mainland. Anything that flies, like hot air balloons or drones, must have official permission.” This shutdown hints at the chal-
lenges facing commercial drone use in China, and how officials might use the regulatory tools at their disposal to impose control. A lack of explicit regulations on drone operations doesn’t help either. Until clear guidelines are in place drone operators will be at the mercy of the same authority that governs everything else that flies beneath the 1,000meter mark in low-altitude airspace: The Civil Aviation Administration of China. In theory at least, all drone flights require advance approval from the authorities. The CAAC isn’t known for updating its rules quickly. While rule enforcement so far has been relatively ad hoc, security concerns will likely dispel any dreams of packages whizzing through China’s skies – particularly in Beijing. Political and national security concerns make the city’s downtown a virtual no-fly zone, as a New Zealand photographer discovered recently when flying a drone in the vicinity of Zhongnanhai. DJI Innovations has even pre-installed software on its drones that prevent flights within 15 kilometers of Tiananmen Square. Domestic security concerns aren’t the only factor that might ground courier companies’ hopes of integrating drones into the broader logistics business. Current drone tech is built for peeping, not parcels. Models similar to the one seen in photos of SF Express test runs have an advertised carrying capacity of 5-11kg, and only run for about 15 minutes, though operation time varies from drone to drone. In contrast, the same-day delivery cost at SF Express this week for a five-pound package shipped from northwestern Beijing’s Haidian district to its East City district – a rough simulacrum of drone delivery distance – was RMB19. Even without nettlesome regulations, drones’ current technical limitations mean they aren’t costeffective enough to outperform fastthinking migrant workers zipping around on a fleet of cheap electric bikes. Commercial drones may fill the nation’s skies one day, but not just yet. China Economic Review | August 2014
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CO-PUBLISHED ARTICLE
Q&A: NEIL HARVEY
A bright future Neil Harvey, Director of Savills Residence, talks about Savills’ newly-opened property and the prospects of the Chinese serviced apartment market
As Savills’ second serviced apartment project in Shanghai, what advantage does the location of Savills Residence Hongqiao boasts? This property is quite unique. It is situated in a good location in Hongqiao and has great access to downtown, including Yan’an highway and the nearby Yili metro station on Line 10.It has a great view over the city. This is a very well-established area in Shanghai so we are very happy to be right in the middle of it. We have restaurants, supermarkets and international schools around here, which makes it an attractive choice for parents when choosing where to live with their family. Could you give us a brief introduction to the distinctive facilities of Savills Residence Hongqiao? This property is situated within a gated community so it is very safe and secure. People like to know they are in a secure environment. The apartments are very well-appointed with high-standard under floor heating, China Economic Review | August 2014
western kitchens, double-door refrigerators, ovens and many other features of high-end living. We focused a lot on the layout and the design of the apartments as well, so hopefully people can feel the difference. Tenants can easily change things in there to make it feel like their home, such as putting up paintings and changing the cushions. Service is a core of our property offering. There is always someone at the end of the phone to help tenants. Even when people go out and around Shanghai, if they are stuck anywhere, they can just call for help. So they have that sense of security again because there is always someone who can help them. We have a low staff turnover mainly because the working environment is very nice, so that breeds familiarity and sense of community. Staff get to meet our guests and know their names, and also the names of their children. It is nice to work in such an environment. By contrast, when you work in a hotel, guests stay maybe two and a half days; the
guest is a room number rather than a name. It is a much nicer feeling when working here. With nearly 20 years of experience conducting tenant and landlord representation services in China, what brand principles outline the concept and spirit of Savills Residence? The sense of humanity is very important to us. Making sure our tenants feel comfortable in their homes as quickly as possible. So we always take the wives whose husbands are at work to meet locals, to find Starbucks and supermarkets. Whatever they need to do, we will show them first so they get comfortable. When we take new guests to the local market for the first time, the vendors there know us. So when they see us with foreigners, they know they are from Savills Residence and they will take extra care. So immediately the person feels they are being looked after in that way and it makes them comfortable. We seek to help people feel at home in the com-
munity and enjoy the China living experience. Guests do not want to come to this country and just stay in an apartment all the time. When they come to Shanghai, we introduce them to Shanghai, and they enjoy that. Savills offers three unique services within one brand: suites, residences and apartments. What is the major difference between them? The market is a big factor when choosing what type of brand we put on a building. Who will be staying there? If you are looking at 25 to 35 years old, single or just-married people, then the apartment brand is more suitable to their lifestyle and budget. Their budget may not be as high as that of senior professionals. Families are more suited to residences with three bedroom, lots of facilities and a big kitchen. Suites are unique to specific locations. They do not fit everywhere because there has to be enough demand from highnet-worth individuals to justify them. Embassy staff will stay there as well as CEOs, very senior people. There is also a difference in terms of interiors. In an apartment, it is cleaner and slicker. In the residences, the style is more homely. In the suites, the materials are much more expensive. Typically, there will be fewer bedrooms in suites than in residences because people who occupy suites need more room for entertaining. They have to get a table for 12 for a dinner. Also, their children would have moved out because they have now grown up. Before we confirm a property, we do a lot of market research. We talk to the company. We talk to the competitors as well. We find out whose business it is and where they came from and also their future business. We want to assure project owners and developers that we are putting in the right product for that market. As a market leader offering professional hospitality consultancy services for owners and developers, what major factors does Savills consider most relevant in terms of serviced apartment’s brand positioning strategy? The brand positioning has to look at the market. Who is in the market?
What will the market be in the future? Then make sure we develop a proper product for that market. When talking about the brand positioning strategy, a solid understanding of the market is what we have to do. And then put in the right product. As the number of serviced apartments rises in Shanghai, what market approaches is Savills Residence taking to seek more potential target clients and secure long-term tenants? The market for us is very strong, especially in first-tier cities. There is pressure on budgets for people to stay in multinational ional corporations. So their budget seems eems to be squeezed. But for people who come for 3 months instead of one year, they need to stay somewhere that hat is already prepared. They just need d to arrive with h their suitcases: That is what we offe offer. er. We offer exactly that at market. So you may see a drop in the residentiall market, but our business is still increasing increassing because we are wining from ng business fr rom people who want to reduce the tim time me spent in serviced apartments. artments. According ing to your observations, have you u seen any specific sp pecific changes in demand and for servic serviced ced apartments in the Chinese hinese marke market? et? How will the serviced evolve d apartment industry i in the coming oming years? When we opened th the he first property eijing, generally 14 yearss ago in Be Beijing, rstand what a people did not under understand serviced apartment wa was. as. So it has me time for the t market taken some to understand rstand what we w do. But ough constantt promonow through d advertising,, people tion and are starting ing to unders understand. stand. I he external market m think the eeing is stable,, I am not sseeing any big increase or bigg deut I see a bigg increase, but om the dome estic crease from domestic takiing market. So we are taking -term view on n a longer-term mestic market the domestic market.. mestic markett The domestic n alternative is not an ng a house, to owning which makes that market quite strong.
And as national companies move, people move as well. They much prefer to live in an apartment rather than in a smaller single hotel room. I think the serviced apartment industry still has a long way to go to reach every level of tenant. There is a lot of demand still in the market for serviced apartments. So we see a very bright future, not just in the first-tier cities but also looking to second and third-tier cities. Of course when you start looking into other cities, you have to do your homework. You have to go and understand who is living there and why, what is the product that needs to be introduced. For the hospitality industry, there is a lot of expansion. In general, for hotels, new hotels are opening in a lot of cities. It is going to be an interesting time.
CO-PUBLISHED ARTICLE
Q&A: NEIL HARVEY
DANGEROUS SLOPE: The welcome relief that met China’s Q2 GDP figures shouldn’t blind people to the problems that still exist
Credit: Tom Spender
ECONOMICS & POLICY: GDP DATA
Not over the hill yet China hit its 7.5% GDP target in the second quarter but the economy is still facing a downward path in the coming year
C
hina’s economy has been rolling downhill for several successive quarters but thanks to some skilled piloting by policymakers between April and June, the juggernaut looks like it is finally taking a turn onto more stable terrain. Official data flooding newsrooms on Wednesday showed GDP rising 7.5% in the three-month period, the first improvement in quarterly growth for three quarters. That was above the widely held consensus of 7.4%, the rate achieved in the previous two quarters. Other important indicators support the view that stabilization is occurring. Industrial production growth picked up more than expected to 9.2% year-on-year in June from 8.8% in May. Fixed asset investment growth edged up to
17.3% from 17.2%. While this is welcome, China’s leaders should be careful not to pay too high a price to arrest the slowdown. Senior officials talked earlier this year of accepting a slower pace of growth in order to alter the balance of the economy and make it more sustainable. High-digit expansion over more than a decade created worrying structural issues that haven’t been properly addressed. Yet the methods used to push up Q2 growth reinforce the prospect that Premier Li Keqiang and his fellow planners are going to do everything they can to hit a 7.5% annual growth target for 2014, even if that means putting off key reforms. Signs of this emerged last month, when Li said “China’s economy needs to
grow at a proper rate, expected to be around 7.5% this year.” Critics of set growth targets say they are an unwelcome remnant of the planned economy era and must be abolished or else will continue to distract officials from the reform process. The spirit, if not the practise, of the slight recovery also shows just how hard some bad old habits are to kick. Since April, China has selectively loosened reserve requirement ratios for certain banks to get more money into the real economy, cut banks’ loan-to-deposit ratios to boost lending and brought forward spending on shanty town renovations and railways. Whatever catchy name is ascribed to these measures, such as “finetuning” or “mini-stimulus,” and China Economic Review | August 2014
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ECONOMICS & POLICY: GDP DATA
no matter how useful they have been in ticking the economy over in the short-term, they hark back to the days of credit and infrastructure spending that the current administration admits it needs to move away from. Last summer, a similar ministimulus was also rolled out. Looking to later this year, economists mostly see the government continuing to loosen monetary, fiscal and property policy further – largely in order to chase what is essentially an arbitrary political goal. “With a high comparison base, Beijing needs an average 2%-2.1% quarter-onquarter growth to deliver the 7.5% annual growth target, and there are still strong headwinds as a consequence of the anti-corruption campaign and property downturn. So we expect Beijing to continue its mini-stimulus program in coming months,” Bank of America Merrill
Lynch chief China economist Lu Ting said in a note. Yet the very success of the “ministimulus” in pushing growth to within target levels may herald some positives. For one, it should convince officials that they do not need to reach for bigger fiscal levers to shore up growth in times of trouble, thus avoiding throwing the economy off the slow-track to reform. It’s not quite going cold turkey, but an important first step nonetheless. Government spending has also shored up construction, a major employer.“Today’s figures show that migrant wages, which should have been most affected by the weakness in the property sector, are still growing at a double digit rate,” Julian EvansPritchard, a Singapore-based economist with Capital Economics, wrote in a note. As long as there are enough jobs around to keep China’s 171 mil-
OVERFLOW: Investment and infrastrucutre are still boosting economic growth figures
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China Economic Review | August 2014
lion migrant workers in employment, officials will rest easier. Planned infrastructure works should generate sufficient work for at least a year. What happens in the remainder of this year poses a crucial test for the economy in 2015 and beyond. Even if officials don’t panic and deploy a full-on fiscal arsenal, it’s hard to see where growth will continue to come from. The mini-stimulus has its limits. “However, without new organic growth drivers, the current ‘mini-stimulus’ uplift measures may not last long, as proved by last year’s experience,” said Tao Wang, an economist with UBS in Hong Kong. Outside of the mini-stimulus, the economy was given a boost by other drivers that cannot be relied on longer-term. A number of Chinese cities including Hohhot, Jinan and Xiamen have eased property curb policies that limited resident property purchases. Exports also provided a gentle boost in June, but their share of the economy is steadily on the decline. “More importantly, the gradual unfolding of China’s structural property downshift will deal an increasingly negative hit to growth, with more and more industrial sectors starting to feel the second round effect towards year-end,” Tao said in a note. A downturn in the property industry, which can account for up to 30% of GDP when including various sectors, according to Standard Chartered, is seen by most economists as the biggest risk in 2014. Fixed-asset investment in real estate edged down to 14.1% in June from 14.7% in May while new home starts growth decreased to -13.8% year-on-year in June from -12.0% the month prior, official data released on Wednesday showed. The sector is giving out worrying signals. Officials tasked with driving the Chinese economy have pulled into the middle lane. They need to open their newly-printed maps that set a course for a road of slower, sustainable growth. If they don’t, a few wrong turns and that downward path will come into full view again.
BALANCED COURT: Beijing’s First Intermediate People’s Court is handling the administrative side of Apple’s voice command patent dispute
Credit: TSeth Nelson
ECONOMICS & POLICY: IP RI GHTS
A fair IP trial? Apple once again finds itself in a Chinese court over an intellectual property dispute but of all the challenges it faces in its biggest market, legal bias may not be one of them
W
hen the gavel fell in early July at the Beijing First Intermediate People’s Court, ruling against Apple in an intellectual property dispute, it came down in the middle of a rough patch for the US tech giant in China. Earlier in the summer Chinese authorities had promised to crack down on the iPhone’s proprietary instant messaging client, iMessage. A few days after the ruling, state broadcaster CCTV took another one of its periodic swings at Apple, implying the iPhone’s location-tracking features might be a threat to national security, a keenly sensitive issue for consumers and officials.
But of the many challenges facing Apple in China, stacked courts aren’t necessarily one of them. Indeed, the case in question has been extraordinarily open and evenhanded, some legal experts suggest. That’s good news for Apple, which was embroiled in a disruptive IP infringement case with another Chinese tech firm over the iPad trademark in 2012 that it paid US$60 million to settle. In no small measure this is because it involves a giant firm such as Apple, but the case also touches on a number of areas central to China’s development of IP rights protection.
It has received an atypical level of care from Chinese courts eager to show they can operate on the level when it comes to safeguarding IP rights. In the February hearing preceding this latest decision, five judges participated in the concerned tribunal rather than the standard three. That hearing saw a full day in court, rather than the typical clock time of under an hour for such suits and, most unusually, all three parties concerned were called into the court for the decision’s specially televised announcement. Typically this information is mailed out in an envelope. Apple is in the dock because Shanghai Zhizhen Network China Economic Review | August 2014
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COMPETING COMMANDS: A Chinese company claims Apple’s Siri infringes its patents
Technology, a little known company, claims the US firm infringed on its patent for a ‘little I robot’ chat technology system with the Siri voice recognition software, introduced to China in the iPhone4S in early 2012. Zhizhen hauled Apple into the Shanghai First Intermediate People’s Court for three hearings in the summer of 2012 before proceedings were suspended that November when Apple asked a Patent Review Board to invalidate Zhizhen’s patent. When the board ruled to uphold the patent’s validity nearly a year later, Apple sued the board, taking both parties – along with Zhizhen – to Beijing’s First Intermediate People’s Court for a brand-new administrative lawsuit. Apple just lost that case, and will probably appeal. Tough as it is for Apple, it’s not a unique situation or one designed specially to hurt a foreign company. The latest ruling simply followed a 34
China Economic Review | August 2014
well-worn judicial habit: The capital’s intermediate court often decides in favor of review board decisions. However, the next court up the ladder, the Beijing High Court, often overturns those rulings. Apple could win this administrative suit yet. Even if the high court ultimately rules in favor of the review board’s ruling upholding Zhizhen’s patent, it doesn’t mean that it is actually enforceable. Once the administrative case is settled, proceedings would then revert back to the Shanghai First Intermediate People’s Court, where the case would resume as a civil lawsuit. In that suit, flash-frozen since 2012, the onus would be on Zhizhen to prove that its patent covers the same scope as that for Apple’s Siri. That might be difficult. Steve Song, a senior patent attorney for Beijing-based IP firm Li and Lee – Leaven who has authored two articles analyzing the Siri case but
Credit: Imaginechina
ECONOMICS & POLICY: IP RIGHTS
is not directly involved in the legal wrangle, told China Economic Review that the courts had been mindful to handle Apple’s case by the book and with extraordinary care. He suggested this approach would serve Apple well if the case did get sent back to Shanghai: There, the court’s decision would depend on the strength of Zhizhen’s patent. Song said he believed that the language used in the drafting of the patent could be plied to Apple’s advantage thanks to an important 2008 Supreme People’s Court interpretation issued for China’s patent law. The Supreme People’s Court stated that an infringing solution should cover each and every element of each claim in the patent concerned. Song believes that when it comes to Zhizhen’s patent, “the drafting of the claim has a lot of drawbacks and flaws.” Chief among them is listing a user as one of the patent’s technical features. While a common mistake in Chinese patents, it would be difficult for the court in Shanghai to ignore the flaw and the clear departure in scope it makes from Apple’s Siri patent. The way this case has been conducted hints that Beijing is taking domestic IP seriously enough to more strictly enforce local firms’ patents, which could even signal a gradual sea change toward a truly fair system for all. Apple’s woes may be mounting in China – a slowing economy and fierce competition from Samsung and lower-cost domestic rivals have hurt sales – but legal injustice isn’t among them. Although most IP cases here can’t expect such a high level of scrutiny and care, it seems the company has been well-served thus far by Chinese IP courts, and stands a fair chance of coming out ahead – though that might take a while. After accepting a case, the Beijing High Court can take anywhere from six months to a year before handing down a verdict. For now, Siri is free to continue struggling to make sense of the wealth of Mandarin accents that even native speakers struggle to decipher.
Credit: George Zhang
ECONOMICS & POLICY: SOE REFORM
END OF AN ERA: Privatizing steel mills has not been enough to save the northeast’s industrial economy
Blueprint for trouble The problems at Xilin Steel underscore the risks in privatizing state assets
I
mages of workers striking outside the factory of one of northeast China’s largest steel groups in late June could be taken as just the latest example of the ongoing woes of the industry. Overcapacity and wavering demand amid a prolonged cooling of the domestic economy have battered prices and pushed almost a quarter of medium and large steel mills into the red. But Xilin Iron & Steel Group, the biggest steel producer in Heilongjiang province where the protests occurred, should not have witnessed such scenes. At least not according to a privatization program launched by the local government in 2005 that aimed to create a blueprint for the sale and restructuring of state assets. Instead, the firm was sitting on debts of RMB19 billion (US$3.07 billion) at the end of March and hadn’t paid employees wages of almost RMB2 million in the five months through the end of June, according to local media. Although
operations were officially continuing as usual, the plant was no longer producing anything, a worker told local media during the unrest. Xilin Steel’s decline raises new questions over what has gone wrong with a grand scheme to revitalize the northeast and about whether current efforts to reform the steel industry can succeed. Northeast China was the first region the Communists sought to industrialize in the 1950s and 1960s. It was chosen for this role because of large coal reserves, vital Soviet development aid and infrastructure built under the Japanese occupation. By the early 1980s, however, with reform and opening up on the agenda of leaders in Beijing, it was increasingly clear that the northeast’s heavy industries were unsuited to the new market-oriented environment taking hold across China. By the early 1990s the region had come down with a bad case of the “northeast syndrome,” as it was dubbed. Without the government
holding down prices of raw materials, industrial production floundered. Growth was almost non-existent. In 1990, when industrial production increased by 7% nationally, output in the northeast increased by only 0.6%. Experts say such capital-intensive industries were doomed to fail in a country which by that point was coming to rely on near-endless quantities of cheap labor as its main competitive advantage. So as manufacturing and exports became the main economic growth drivers in the south and east of the country, the northeast fell behind. Huge shutdowns and layoffs ensued in the following years as the “iron rice bowl” system of cradle-to-grave support was decisively smashed. China’s accession into the World Trade Organization in 2001 advanced manufacturing and exports further entrenched the problems of the industrial north. Embarrassed economic planners decided to do something, and in 2003 launched China Economic Review | August 2014
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the Northeast Revitalization Plan, which called for a massive overhaul of state-owned enterprises, or SOEs. It is perhaps fitting that this model of privatization started, and seemingly stalled, in the city of Yichun, lying just across the border from the former Soviet Union. Founded in 1966, Xilin Iron & Steel Group is one of only two major steel producers left in Heilongjiang today. It employs 10,000 people in a city of 1.25 million. In 2005 the company was earmarked for restructuring under the broader umbrella of revitalizing the northeast – a series of favorable policies from the central government including tax relief and experimenting with collectively owned enterprises. One element of that was to pull in private capital and management. Xilin Steel was just one of hundreds of SOEs that were shaken up by the government, but central to its story is Wu Jinliang, the father of its privatization and one of the notorious shadowy characters who started scooping up failing state firms in the late 1990s. Wu is an academic turned steel magnate. Early on he became convinced that the structure of asset ownership within SOEs was unclear, and that this ambiguity was hurting their profitability. To him, it was one of the best-kept secrets in the Chinese business world. Upon graduating, Wu put his theories into practice by buying up SOEs under the banner of his company, Tongde Industrial. Restructuring drove up stock prices, and Wu would funnel the extra capital into the acquisition of new firms. Eventually, Wu bought and merged his company into a massive conglomerate called Tianxing Meter Group, in which he held a majority share. As Wu pushed his aggressive buying spree accusations starting surfacing in the media and among industry insiders that he had won bids for companies fraudulently and that his restructurings of firms had resulted in massive losses of state capital. But the bad press didn’t stop Wu from riding the wave of privatization created by the Northeast Revitalization Plan. With this momentum Wu made 36
China Economic Review | August 2014
Credit: Oxendale Mac
ECONOMICS & POLICY: SOE REFORM
a bold play for Xilin Steel under the Tongde banner. In 2005, Wu acquired all rights to Xilin Steel, including land premiums, through a RMB370 million agreement with Heilongjiang province. Critics, however, believe it was never Wu’s intention to restructure Xilin Steel’s assets, only to profit off them. He resorted to questionable methods, such as winning over management by promising them a 30% share in the company – a share that came out of money earmarked for workers’ resettlement. Xilin Steel wasn’t the last of his exploits, either. He used his stock rights in the company as collateral to buy yet another mining enterprise. It was a model that Wu trademarked, but he wasn’t the only shady character in SOE reform. Private businessmen like Wu were able to take advantage of the privatization process through connections to local officials, who were happy to sell off assets for greater financial returns. In a preliminary paper published in May, researchers from Tsinghua University in Beijing and Booth School of Business in Chicago dubbed this sort of agreement “crony capitalism.” “The privatization is a special deal between the local government (ruler) and the new private owner (crony), which brings to ruler more economic benefits,” the paper says. Wu was one of the most successful of these shady steel magnates – at first. Fast forward a few years and the picture had changed dramatically. New environmental regulations to curb pollution added costs to steel mills while lagging demand from
the construction industry that had boomed in earlier years hurt earnings. Wu could no longer rely on his steel empire to turn a profit and funnel funds into his M&A dealmaking. By 2011, profit margins in the Chinese steel industry had fallen from a peak of over US$50 per ton just three years earlier to below zero, according to data from Platts. Although they have now recovered, volatility in steel prices is acute. Overcapacity also continues to plague the industry. Consumption of finished steel products collapsed in 2013, even as production totals spiked to an alltime high of over 800 million tons. These troubles blew up on June 30 when Xilin Steel workers went on strike. The Yichun city government eventually stepped in to provide lifesaving loans to the firm to avoid mass layoffs and the risk of social unrest that can follow such incidents. But that runs counters to Beijing’s efforts to restructure steel mills to make them more efficient and less polluting, a process that will only see the further erosion of the northeast’s industrial base. Late last year the State Council recommended cutting 80 million tons of excess steel capacity by 2017. “China’s steel reform appears to be taking a three-pronged approach – cutting capacity, shutting down polluting plants, and upgrading the steel industry to be cleaner and more efficient,” Joseph Kim, executive director of metals products at CME Group, said in a report. Kim noted that “this time, however, the political pressure exists to follow through” with restructuring, said Kim, referring to previous campaigns to curb steel production that failed to gain traction. The Third Plenum has put privatization of state assets firmly back on the agenda and in recent weeks more plans have been publicized to bring private capital into SOEs. But Xilin Steel serves as a reminder that throwing state firms to the private sector isn’t a problem-free solution. China needs to stop thinking of its early investment in SOEs as interestfree loans that don’t need to be repaid and start thinking of them, finally, as debts that need to be settled.
2014ฤ8Ꮬఓ
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多屏互动时代 楼市新风向 海外并购风云再起
目录
ቤފ 38 后会无期
39 ୡ ॖෂ৺ူ 40 多屏互动时代
જᄌ 42 移动医疗如何赢利 44 赴美上市一网情深 46 海外并购风云再起 48 楼市新风向
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49 看取拂云飞
ॖෂ৺ူ ࣶືઑࣅဟࡔ
ఘᒦਪ 50 助人为乐
后会无期
新观察
二元双轨制的小时代理应退出历史舞台 文 | 海潮
延
38
续半个多世纪的城乡二元户籍制度
推动城乡二元户籍制度的变革是历史
大利益，而大部分普通员工则收入有限，
有望出现根本性变革。近期国务
的必然。而另一个备受诟病的二元体系则
尤其是中年员工，如果始终处于底层，随
院户籍制度改革的意见提出，“取消农业
是退休养老金双轨制：政府部门和事业单
着年龄的增长，处境只会越来越尴尬。因
户口与非农业户口性质区分和由此衍生的
位人员的养老金由财政统一支付，企业员
此，高层往往希望越晚退休越好，甚至还
蓝印户口等户口类型，统一登记为居民户
工的养老金则由单位和员工按一定标准缴
渴望着终身制，而大部分普通员工则希望
口。”
纳，前者的退休金远远高于后者。现在，
尽早退休。退休后至少可以拿一份养老保
打破二元制其实就意味对背后的利益
事业单位的养老金改革方案也已公布，其
险，还能发挥“余热”，做些兼职挣点
进行重新分配。而户籍制度变革的难点在
工作人员将与企业人员一样参加社会保
钱。这兴许是大部分普通员工对推迟退休
于附着于户口之上的公共资源如养老、医
险。养老金并轨跨出了第一步，也同样引
年龄心存疑惧的重要原因。
疗、教育等如何进行公平配置。此外，农
发了疑问：巨大的社保金缺口如何弥补？
没有疑问的是，城乡二元户籍制和养
村户口不复存在后，农民是否还能拥有土
也许，养老金对位高权重的工作人
老金双轨制及其他类似的二元体系，大多
地承包权？城市居民是否可以获得农村土
员根本不必介怀。这又牵扯到延迟退休年
是计划经济时代的产物，治疗此类沉疴很
地使用权？
龄的问题。无论哪类性质的单位，大部分
难手到病除，也必定会出现很多新问题。
这项变革对当前疲弱的住房市场不会
普通员工不太愿意延迟退休年龄，这可能
然而，追求公平正义的步伐不可阻挡，无
产生多大拉动作用，但将眼光放远就可见
与员工的两极化有关。由于地位、职权的
论前程有多少山重水复，我们都应该对这
其对开拓内需和城市化进程的积极影响。
差异，少数高层在工作岗位上享受到了巨
样的“小时代”说出“后会无期”。
China Economic Review | August 2014
聚焦
取消住房限购就能够拯救楼市么
市场与产业
日益增高，网购模式在消费者中得到认
能力之外，还需要国家在法律监管及社会
一线城市短期或维持限购
同，三四线城市购买力凸显。三四线城市
信用体系建设上多下工夫。通过相关法律
越来越多的城市已放宽或完全取消住房限
孕育着大量的购买力，因零售业不成熟没
政策的制定和实施，允许和鼓励新建小额
购政策。高力国际预计，一线城市短期内
有得到足量释放。电商下沉对区县、城镇
筹资平台的发展，为众筹模式的发展提供
完全取消限购政策的可能性较低。虽然如
和农村的经济有带动作用。京东将愿意返
必要的政策环境；同时加强社会信用体系
此，包括利率折扣等在内的优惠措施或将
乡从事物流的员工派回区县，带动家人、
建设，推动全民诚信意识建设。
系用以刺激首次及改善型购房需求的方
村人进行管理运作。互联网与农产品结合
法。数据显示，诸如上海等城市的成交量
可能性很大，但效果和时间有待商榷，农
互联网教育须精耕细作
在过去几个月中以双位数百分比下跌。价
产品的管理、运输、销售等均受较多因素
清科研究中心统计数据显示，去年中国在
格的走势将取决于预期的贷款利率折扣或
影响。电商渠道下沉过程中的扩张为公司
线教育市场规模达839.7亿元，同比增长
其它政策的放宽是否符合潜在购房者的预
带来经营管理压力，还有下沉后的渠道管
19.9%。在线教育用户规模达6720万人，
期。且效果预计将难以在短期内明朗，而
控（效益、服务质量等），物流体系的运
在线教育用户人数同比增长13.8%，预计
是在政策放宽和其对市场的潜在影响之间
作能力是否能支撑庞大的网络等问题
2017年将达1.2亿人。中小学在线教育、
会有为期约6个月的滞后，正如2008年金
在线职业教育、高等学历在线教育等细分
融危机时的后市表现亦显示了此类政策效
众筹丰富普惠金融内涵
领域成为市场规模增长的主要动力。高等
果的滞后性。高力国际中国区研究部董事
网信金融集团首席执行官盛佳指出，以网
学历在线教育市场规模虽然持续增长，但
谢靖宇认为，在低线城市中，鉴于近几个
络支付、信贷、众筹的兴起为标志，新兴
市场占有率逐年小幅下降。职业在线教育
月内的政策放宽趋势以及中央政府显而易
互联网金融极大地丰富了普惠金融发展
和在线语言教育人属刚需，使用者付费能
见的默许态度，限购政策预计将进一步放
的内涵。众筹作为最符合普惠理念的互联
力强，是在线教育异军突起的领域。清科
宽。毋庸置疑，对于那些存在供应过量的
网金融筹资方式，具有最广泛的潜在用户
研究中心分析师金恩廷认为，互联网教育
城市而言，房价进一步调整在所难免。
群，它的出现带来了金融理念的重大转
中蕴含的投资机会类似于电商。电商崛起
变。他推断，加上社交SNS网络的辅佐，
时带来的庞大用户群使其形成爆发增长之
电商下沉带动县域经济
众筹模式在未来将能对普惠金融和小微企
势。互联网教育也在于它潜在的可开发的
天猫电器将下沉到县域以及农村，同时各
业融资以及创新企业生态起到更大和更突
庞大用户群，所不同的是互联网虽快，教
家电商都在进行渠道下沉、城镇刷墙广告
出的作用。但就目前来说，众筹模式要在
育却不同于商贸行业可迅速转化为生产
等。易观智库分析师刘梦蕾认为，电商下
中国落地生根并取得长足发展，还有很多
力，教育行业是慢行业，需要精耕细作，
沉渠道的原因在于，消费者对服务的需求
工作要做。除了练好内功打造好平台服务
因此投资教育行业不能急于求成。
China Economic Review | August 2014
39
封面故事
多屏互动时代 通过多终端进行跨屏多媒体传播和营销已是大势所趋
屏互动时代揭开帷幕，广播报纸电
多
向于多屏观看内容，注意力碎片化。”易
化。这是全球不可阻挡的发展趋势。互联
视等传统媒体一统天下的格局已成
观智库高级分析师庞亿明表示，移动互联
网终端市场爆发，主要影响了年轻观众，
过眼烟云。从国内球迷对巴西世界杯的关
网媒体起了很大的分散作用，未来如可穿
导致电视收视率大幅减少。年轻观众不愿
注亦可窥其一斑。传统收视率调查机构以
戴设备和户外大屏都将通过智能手机实现
意在电视上花时间，他们将更多时间用于
往只发布电视节目收视率，而随着多屏跨
跨屏传播和营销。
手机和互联网。
媒体的发展，跨平台多终端受众测量体系
中国互联网络信息中心（CNNIC）
中老年观众则相对稳定，主要诉求是
也应运而生。巴西世界杯谢幕不久，央视
数据显示，去年底中国网络视频用户规模
看电视直播。胡浩分析，中老年电视观众
CSM与一些机构联合发布了世界杯多屏收
达4.28亿，网络视频使用率为69.3%。去
收视率保持稳定不是偶然的，因为无论网
视数据，显示全部小组赛的平均每场电视
年国内手机视频用户为2.47亿，借助4G
络视频还是手机移动端，目前由于政策因
直播用户规模超过1880万人，网络直播用
技术，移动视频有望更上一层楼。易观智
素，在直播领域都无法提供很好的服务。
户规模也超过340万。虽然观看电视直播
库预计，今年中国智能手机出货量将超4.5
中老年收视的核心诉求是看电视直播，新
仍是首选，但网络已成为重要媒介。易观
亿，智能电视市场占有率将达69%。
媒体无法提供很好的直播内容体验，所以 中老年用户还会将时间花在电视上。
智库专题报告显示，在球迷关注世界杯的 各种终端中，电脑、手机、电视和平板电
多屏家庭娱乐
网络视频服务商的用户在线时长和用
百度垂直搜索部总经理胡浩认为，多
户媒体时间远超其他互联网服务。从去年
互联网媒体以及移动终端的发展，将
屏互动开启了客厅娱乐新时代。百度垂直
开始，视频网站都在推进高清甚至超高清
会使在电视机前观看内容的群体，逐渐向
搜索主要负责百度多媒体搜索，目前业务
战略，用户体验有了很大提升，视频网站
Pad、电脑和手机屏分散。当前的趋势是
范围覆盖PC端、移动端和电视端。
内容也越来越丰富。网络视频不仅侵占了
脑排在前四位。
多屏同源传播方式日渐形成，电视独占用
目前在客厅娱乐市场，传统电视受到
电视时间，也侵占了用户在网上做其他事
户下降，跨多屏用户上升。“未来用户偏
网络视频和移动视频的冲击，发生很大变
情的时间，尤其侵占了PC互联网的时间。 胡浩观察到，移动端崛起并没有影响到在 PC上看视频，在PC上看视频依然在稳步
广告主对多屏投放重视度对比 2013 2 2016 2
络视频和移动视频上花的时间更多了。 移动视频的崛起速度惊人，胡浩在去
48%
非常重要
增加。说明视频的大盘做大了，用户在网
年下半年看到的趋势，无论是百度视频还
88%
是爱奇艺，数据非常惊人。平均用户日使 用时长，移动端超过一个小时，甚至人均
10%
较为重要
4 47%
时长达一个半小时。移动用户量的增长速 度也非常惊人，百度视频APP从去年1月
2 2% 3% 3
一般情况
开始发布第一款产品，经过一年半时间， 累积用户超过2亿。移动视频无论是从用增 长速度还是用户时长和用户体验的优化升
2% 2 2% 2
不重要
级迭代，都呈现了非常健康的发展趋势。 胡浩还提出，用户黏性非常强的移动视频
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
业务具备很强的广告价值和用户属性。 客厅娱乐领域的行为变化，主要体
来源：eMarketer · 易观智库 Source: www.enfodesk.com
现在用户从家庭的集体观看行为，逐渐转 变成为个性化的多屏观看。屏幕选择多样
40
China Economic Review | August 2014
多屏互动时代
化，除了看电视，还能打开平板电脑看视 频，用手机看视频。可能不是在客厅，而 是在卧室或在书房看。原来一家人在一两 台电视机前看，现在每个人都有自己的屏 幕。胡浩表示，客厅娱乐和用户使用行为 的迁移，对广告业带来的是机遇和挑战。 未来新媒体企业在多屏市场上还有多 大想象空间？胡浩提到，一个领域是电视 游戏，百度也在积极布局电视游戏领域； 还有一个未来有很大想象空间的是在线教 育，用户需求非常旺盛，一些OTT互联网 电视盒子厂商在布局这一领域。在线教育 正在颠覆传统教育，也给多屏市场带来很 大机会。
多屏传播战略 多屏互动时代，基于传统媒体的广告 购买已经有点落伍。广告代理商都在实施 多屏传播的战略。易观智库调查表明，广 告主预测在未来几年多屏活动将占据预算 很大部分，广告主在2016年对多屏活动的 预算将由去年的20%提高到50%。 视频运营商通过渠道平台布局的多屏
多屏营销的未来趋势是从多屏覆盖到跨屏合一
化，应对多屏营销挑战。乐视网进行五屏 跨界，打造多屏营销生态。爱奇艺、优酷
题是如何实现“跨屏ID的识别”，这方面
移动端分别开设了频道专栏，整合专题、
土豆也在多屏战略上加大布局。
还不乐观。庞亿明认为，真正实现跨屏采
菜谱大全等。好豆网则通过用户自作菜谱
购或跨屏传播，目前还为时尚早。
引发流量。美食杰网站通过用户创建自己
当户外屏遇上移动屏，线上线下联 动打造多屏营销。百灵闪拍打通户外和移
《舌尖上的中国》第二季采取“电
动屏，将传统户外广告推广演变成线下体
视（主要央视）+主流视频网站+户外电
验与线上互动的O2O模式。移动互联网
子屏”多屏传播方式，实现了全面的用户
庞亿明认为，该片传播与营销虽然有
广告“户外入口战”升级，小米手机和迈
覆盖。无论从电视的收视率、视频网站的
较大创新，但从各项数据可以看出，在大
外迪（商业场所免费WiFi领先品牌）合
播放次数以及社交媒体相关话题的讨论次
家都积极响应“傍焦”营销的同时，央视
作WiFi，覆盖大量线下用户。融合先进
数，都达到空前的热度。呈现出跨媒体营
自身的营销并没有较大起色，央视官网以
技术，实现多屏营销。户外媒体中，二维
销特点。该片有几大创新。首先是播放模
及央视视频网站的注册和活跃度并没有大
码、条形码等打通户外屏和移动屏，由静
式创新，开启国内纪录片周播模式。其次
幅提升，在本次营销中仅起到了提供“场
变动，增强互动。
是传播模式创新，采取“央视+主流视频平
景”的作用。
的专题和网站推荐，与用户达成了良好的 互动。
广告代理商实施多屏战略是进行程
台”多屏传播方式，并与电商平台、美食
多屏营销的未来趋势是什么？庞亿
序化购买多屏化。eMarketer调查显示，
网站形成战略合作。最后是取得海外最好
明认为是“从多屏覆盖到跨屏合一”。未
去年53%的媒体购买者已经进行程序化交
成绩，已在某国际影视节目展上启动了首
来内容及营销不再仅仅局限于多屏覆盖，
易，其中77%的购买者计划在未来的12个
轮海外版权销售，单片销售额就达到了35
而是利用平台渠道如何进行内容及终端的
月中增加这方面的预算，同时视频领域的
万美元，创造了中国纪录片海外发行的最
协同合一：互联网技术的终端协同，数字
程序化购买将有较大幅度增长。 未来融合
好成绩。
媒体和传统媒体的协同合一。要关注不同
PC和移动，甚至视频、电视等多种跨屏 DSP将进入快速发展阶段。 多屏程序化购买现阶段需要解决的问
该片创收视率创新高，广告收益颇
屏幕的内在联系点，平台内容要匹配消费
丰。不仅自身多屏营销，还引发其他渠道
者，要掌握消费者的消费行为习惯，让消
获利，衍生价值凸显。如豆果网在PC端和
费用户的体验需求升级。
China Economic Review | August 2014
41
话题
移动医疗如何赢利 探索移动医疗行业发展初级阶段的商业模式
章
女士想在暑期与丈夫和孩子去欧 洲旅游。而家中年逾古稀的父母
都有高血压，让她放心不下。临行前，她 买了一台移动智能血压计，下载了专门的 APP，申请了账号。两位老人可在家中将 血压计数据上传APP客户端。章女士出门 在外，就可随时登陆APP查看他们的血压 情况，提醒老人用药或去医院就诊。 移动智能血压计是移动医疗的具体 应用之一。移动医疗是指通过使用移动通 信技术来提供医疗服务和信息，包括面向 个人移动医疗和面向医疗机构移动医疗。 移动医疗改变了过去人们只能前往医院就 医的传统生活方式，将大众引导入更为先 进、轻松和便捷的就诊模式中。 易观智库则预测，今年移动医疗市场 规模将达到26.7亿元，2018年市场规模 将突破百亿元。移动医疗在经过前期的技 术发展、手机等智能终端的普及、大量移
移动医疗服务市场前景可观
动医疗APP的面世以及VC/PE资本的进入 后，去年迎来了产业整合的机会，各大厂
清科研究中心分析师金恩廷认为，
判断与诊治。另一方面医院、医生、保险
商纷纷进入移动医疗行业，探索相应的商
移动医疗行业的利益链条主要受三方面影
公司则希望通过移动医疗来进行内部沟通
业模式。
响：付费方政府，产品决策者医院、医
与管理，提高效率，同时保险公司则希望
生，产品供应方药品、器械生产商。产品
通过移动医疗来实现对用户费用的及早报
决策者、产品供应方都要受政府管制，产
销。
剖析利益链条 中国正在进行医疗改革，移动医疗 服务市场前景可观。另一方面，中国已于
42
品供应方的产品还要触及医生。以医生患 者等用户为核心，提供数据及信息服务。
美国收费模式
2010年进入深度老龄化阶段。而医疗需求
成功的商业模式既要满足利益链条上
从美国移动医疗发展经验看，移动医
增长与供给不足的矛盾冲突，也为移动医
相关人员的诉求，为消费者创造价值，同
疗的患者方需求包括慢性病管理、健康管
疗深度发展创造了空间。
时也要能为消费者提供物美价廉的服务。
理，医生方需求则包括医院内部沟通、患
中国人口基数大，患者存在看病难，
但医疗健康行业本身是专业度非常高，管
者沟通。双方面目前面临的机遇与挑战包
费用高，看病不透明等实际问题。根据易
理相对复杂的行业，消费者的议价能力较
括：实体医疗资源长期匮乏，医疗支付面
观智库的调查，几乎所有移动互联用户都
弱，基本上是由政府及医疗机构定价。在
临压力和医改，互联网内生的渗透力量及
表示可以接受移动医疗，特别是当移动医
这种情况下，移动医疗的出现，使互联网
电子、医疗技术的发展；医疗行业本身复
疗可以节约看病时间，提高看病效率等实
与医疗有了很好的结合。
杂的特性，缺乏成熟的商务模式及对传统
际问题时。到今年1月，中国移动互联用
移动医疗使用者对于移动医疗的诉求
户目前已经达到8.38亿人。这样的用户土
往往不同。比如患者希望通过移动医疗来
在探索中国自身移动医疗行业模式的
壤，成为移动医疗发展的巨大潜能，为移
更好地与医生及医院进行沟通，以了解自
时候，美国的5种收费模式提供了有益借
动医疗的细分用户群分类提供了基础。
己的健康状况，对已病与未病进行及早的
鉴。第一是向药企收费：Epocrates是全
China Economic Review | August 2014
就诊医疗模式的偏好等。
话题
移动医疗对于医疗成本的节约 研究疾病
研究地区
研究主题
研究结果
糖尿病
美国
出院后的远程监控
每个病人的全部医疗费用可降低42%
高血压
美国
通过无线远程地将主要生命体征信 息传送到电子病例中
把两次发病看医生的时间延长71%
心力衰竭
欧盟
远程监护接受心脏起搏器植入手 术的病人
降低住院时间35%，降低出院后看医生的 次数10%
慢性阻塞性肺病
加拿大
远程监护有严重呼吸疾病的病人
降低住院次数50%
来源：清科研究中心2014年6月
球第一家上市的移动医疗公司，为医疗提
式。第二是转移支付：即付费者与使用者
素。医药产业链从上游的原料药、中药材
供移动临床信息参考，也为药企提供精准
是两个群，在产业链上通常具有感情相关
到终端的零售店医疗机构，相应政府部门
的广告和问卷调查服务。后者构成了其收
性或利益相关性。可由向医生收费转而探
都会进行相应管制。从药品价格管理、药
入的75%。第二是向医生收费：Zocdoc
索向药企收费。很多患者社区的收费模式
品招投标政策、医疗保障制度到药品审批
是向患者推荐医生的平台。通过平台，病
也转向医药研产业链上的机构和厂商。第
也存在相应限制。
人可方便地选择预约医生，医生可得到更
三是循环补贴商业模式：形成多点共振，
由于政策对医疗资源的严格控制，当
多病人，尤其是保险覆盖的病人。医生用
产业链足够长，某一点亏损或策略性亏损
医疗健康软件和网站发展到一定程度，用
户每月要向ZocDoc付费250美元，此项
后，使用其他市场策略，转换商业价值。
户积累到一定规模时，必然面临如何与法
收入可达千万美元以上。第三是向医院收
目前移动医疗商业模式最可能的收
规相适应的困境。郭阳表示，政策不允许
费：Vocera为医院提供移动的通讯解决方
费群体金恩廷认为有4个：医院、医生护
患者私自购买处方药，只有官方建立的预
案，可使医生护士与病人在专有的HIPPA
士、药企、患者。患者为硬件产品、服务
约挂号渠道才具有合法性。在盈利模式方
法案规范信息下使用和传输。出于对患者
产品付费，医院为HIS、FIS系统付费，医
面，由于用户的付费习惯尚未形成，移动
信息安全的保护，院内即时通讯工具必须
疗机构为企业向它们提供的产品付费，医
医疗厂商在实现盈利模式时困难重重。
符合HIPPA要求，只使得Vocera的产品
生护士向移动医疗平台或APP为他们提供
智能健康设备的用户黏度较低，大多
具有一定专有性。第四是向保险公司收
的学术参考资料付费用。付费方的付费意
数用户未形成使用习惯，并且缺乏用户数
费：WellDoc是专注于慢性病管理的移动
愿强弱，取决移动医疗企业是否可以出台
据分析结果。而传感器采集数据的准确性
技术公司，产品是手机+云端的糖尿病管理
有吸引力的移动医疗解决方案，从成本、
也有待观察。用户无法养成使用习惯，绝
平台。患者可以用手机记录存储数据。目
质量、效益上实现一定时间内的投资财务
大部的智能健康设备的数据价值并不高。
前得到两家医保公司的报销，提供医保给
回报，产生增值效益，以及是否能在资本
郭阳认为未来还是需要平台性的数据集成
患者。WellDoc还与药企合作，利用药企
市场上获得支持。当以上条件都达到，付
方案进行数据整合与分析。
的医药代笔销售服务。第五是向消费者收
费方付费意愿强烈到一定程度，且付费达
移动医疗服务和功能满足了用户的
费：面向消费者的健康移动应用，通过可
到一定规模与数量时，便可以称这种商业
诊断和咨询需求，但通过用户监测数据来
佩带硬件，监测生理参数，提供移动睡眠
模式走通了。只有在稳固的商业模式下，
预防疾病还有待提升。“未来移动医疗需
监测和个性化睡眠指导。
移动医疗才能真正提供弥补市场空缺的产
要在不断产品、服务优化的同时，可通过
品，创新服务，满足用户的深层需求。
医疗O2O模式进行与传统医疗的打通、
这些收费模式可分为B2B和B2C。前
融合，打造一站式的医疗服务平台来不断
者向医疗机构、医生、药企、保险公司收 费，后者通过向用户收取服务费和设备销 售额款来盈利，多采用组合模式。
存在诸多瓶颈 医疗领域的创业者需要更多面对政
优化用户体验。”易观智库分析师郭阳建 议道。
策瓶颈。金恩廷认为，医疗行业的进入壁
推动移动医疗快速发展是四大动力：
垒很厚，市场与行政之间的博弈严重，其
老龄化社会+供需缺口+移动互联/大数据+
国内移动医疗收费目前是3种模式。
中产业链条专业壁垒和传统医疗观念的强
政府支持。未来移动医疗市场将更为垂直
第一是使用者付费：采用向用户收费的模
大粘性、法律法规是最重要的行政监管因
细分，打造最优用户体验将至为关键。
摸索商业模式
China Economic Review | August 2014
43
话题
赴美上市一网情深 投融资环境较为宽松的美国吸引着国内互联网企业前往IPO
国内互联网企业尤其是电商平台而
对
个海外市场。香港主板作为中国企业海外
要融资。但这些投资人也要变现，如何变
言，阿里巴巴即将在美国上市是值
上市主力市场的地位依旧不变，共有35家
现？答案就是上市。”
得期待的大事件。然而，刚在美国上市的
企业上市。同期，6家中国企业在纳斯达克
互联网企业为什么选择海外上市？田
聚美优品、京东商城等电商平台近期被媒
证券交易所上市，其中京东商城融资17.8
峥分析认为：“因为国内不允许，国内规
体指出涉嫌知假售假，给国内电商行业蒙
亿美元，打破中企海外上市纪录。6月份，
定上市企业必须要能实现3000万利润，
上了一层阴影。
智联招聘和迅雷先后登陆纽约证券交易所
但这很明显不符合互联网公司的实际情
今年上半年，在欧美经济复苏的刺
和纳斯达克证券交易所，两家企业融资额
况。相比之下，美国的投融资环境则较为
激下，中企赴海外上市热情高涨。清科研
均低于1亿美元。总计8家互联网企业上半
宽松，比较适合互联网企业上市融资。因
究中心数据显示，今年上半年共有99家中
年在海外上市，融资高达28.62亿美元。
此，国内互联网企业会纷纷赴美上市。”
国企业在境内外资本市场上市，合计融资
是什么原因导致上半年互联网企业赴
百度最近宣布推出葡萄牙语搜索，正
175.71亿美元，平均每家企业融资1.77亿
美上市较密集？“最近国内互联网企业到
式进军巴西等海外市场。除了百度，BAT
美元。其中有47家中企赴海外上市，合计
了窗口期，这些企业憋了两年，一直迟迟
其他两家巨头的海外拓展业务却不是很
融资100.77亿美元。中企海外上市活跃度
没有上市。”易观商业解决方案副总裁田
好，百度则是成功的典范。腾讯在海外也
与融资规模相较于前几年，表现出明显的
峥表示，“整体而言，目前国内互联网企
有1亿用户，主要是海外华人。百度海外市
增长态势。
业本质上大都处在训练用户习惯的阶段。
场的成功拓展，对BAT其他两家巨头也许
海外上市的47家中国企业分布于香港
因为要获得用户首先要训练用户使用习
会产生一定的带动作用。
主板、纳斯达克证券交易所、纽约证券交
惯，比如嘀嘀打车等。但训练用户习惯的
对于百度去巴西进军葡萄牙语搜索，
易、法兰克福证券交易所和香港创业板所5
投入产出周期比较长，所以这些企业必须
田峥分析认为：“首先，应该承认，今天 泛英语国家的市场已经被美国的互联网公 司所占领，百度选择进军葡萄牙语极为精 准。其次，语言代表着文化。国内互联网 巨头布局海外市场的挑战主要是要符合本 地文化，底层文化一定要接地气。百度主 要做信息搜索，更容易进军海外市场，海 外做商业和社交更难一些，腾讯、阿里海 外拓展面临的挑战会更大。” 作为规模最大的电商平台，阿里的挑 战还远不止这些，比如淘宝假货问题就备 受美国资本市场的关注，被曝光过的何止 聚美优品、京东商城和1号店等。 易观智库分析师林文斌表示：“开放 平台是电商丰富品类提升流量和规模的重 要方式。为了吸引更多的优质商家入驻， 电商简化对商家入驻环节的审核和运营的 监管，使售假卖家成为漏网之鱼。” 舆论对于电商行业出售假货的质疑， 从来就没有中断过。此次电商平台涉假波 及范围比较大，正准备上市的阿里是否会
今年上半年互联网企业赴美上市较密集
44
China Economic Review | August 2014
受到殃及就很难预料了。
沐千年灵汤 至庐山东林庄
2014年6月12日，帝盛酒店集团（HK02266）在江西省星子县温泉镇推出一座全新的帝盛度假村系列五星级温泉酒 店—庐山东林庄，酒店占地四万多平方米，酒店内所有客房的供水全部取自于天沐温泉水，配以豪华舒适的园林设 计风格。酒店拥有5个多功能会议厅、1个大宴会厅，内设8个露天温泉池、1个室内游泳池及1个健身中心，将带给 您位于天沐温泉镇超凡的度假享受。 庐山东林庄北靠新近落成的48米高的东林大佛，与酒店仅十分钟步行距离。而相邻的东林寺建于东晋大元九 年，相传名僧慧远在西林寺以东结“龙泉精舍”筹建东林寺，所谓“龙泉”便是如今的天沐温泉，而龙泉泉眼便正 对庐山东林庄。庐山东林庄东边则坐拥秀丽的庐山瀑布群，并与陶渊明故居陶村相邻，山水相映，是真正的李白诗 中“西登香炉峰，南见瀑布水”所在。 天沐温泉镇闻名已久，泉眼发现于晋代，传说此处为晋代文女真跨黄龙升天处；明代药物学家李时珍也曾来此 考察，将天沐温泉载入《本草纲目》。天沐温泉为硫磺矿泉，含多种微量元素，水温62-70°C，对美容护肤、心血 管疾病等都有帮助与疗效。如今，庐山·东林庄将以崭新的面貌出现在大家面前。“结庐在人境，而无车马喧”， 在远离尘世的人间仙境享受悠长假期，沐千年灵汤，观壮丽山水，登东林大佛，尽在庐山东林庄。 有着香港酒店公主之称的邱咏筠女士自2002年正式进入家族产业之后，已先后在上海、武汉、成都成功开设帝 盛品牌酒店，成功地打开大陆市场。如今，邱小姐将把“华人足迹”计划带到中华文化圣地蜒庐山。沐千年灵汤， 至庐山东林庄。 帝盛酒店集团（香港交易所股份代号：2266）成立于2007年1月，于2010年10月在香港联合交易所有限公司主 版上市，是远东发展有限公司（香港交易所股份代号：0035）的全资附属公司。集团酒店遍布香港、上海、武汉、 成都、吉隆坡、柔佛新山、纳闽及新加坡。 集团全资拥有管理三个品牌：“帝盛精品酒店系列”、“帝盛酒店及度假村系列”和“丝丽酒店系列”。目前 集团拥有及管理19间酒店,另有11间不同档次的酒店将于中国大陆、香港、马来西亚和伦敦相继开业，集团将提供 客房总数多达8,600间。 帝盛酒店集团的业务重点是在尚未开发但极具潜力的亚洲地区发展三至四星级酒店业务。集团会以“华人足 迹”策略为股东创造利益最大化。 集团以独特的运作模式经营及管理旗下的酒店业务。集团会致力透过发展收购及管理合约继续推动其战略性的 增长。 中国江西省九江市星子县温泉 T: +86 792 2668 888 Ext. 3988 | F: +86 792 2602 999 | E: info.lushan@dorsetthotels.com | W: dorsetthotels.com/china/lushan l dosett.com
话题
海外并购风云再起 三一重工胜诉或将提振中企海外并购的信心
美
确立世界眼光
诉法院裁定，中国三一重工集团在
当前国内行业竞争激烈，甚至到了白
工成为近年来普茨迈斯特最强劲的竞争对
美国的关联公司罗尔斯（Ralls）公司在起
热化程度。国内企业要维持公司业绩的高
手。2009年，三一重工超越普茨迈斯特，
诉奥巴马政府和美国外资委员会一案中胜
速发展，必须要实现跨国经营，要继续走
成为世界销量最大的混凝土泵制造商。此
诉。中国企业的此次海外并购案胜诉，堪
在行业的前面，参与国际竞争。科学技术
次海外收购处于欧债危机爆发的时刻，普
称具有历史性意义。在三一重工网站将此
日新月异的发展，通讯信息交流的方便与
茨迈斯特欧洲经济不经济及利润空间被挤
案定性为“尊严胜诉”，称三一集团和罗
快捷，国际分工不断深化，经济全球化逐
压，市场份额出现下跌，进而选择出售。
尔斯公司欢迎华盛顿联邦巡回上诉法院的
渐加速，各国间经济及贸易联系紧密。人
三一重工此次收购既可以迅速提升在国际
判决，并为三一集团和其关联公司在美维
民币国际化，中国资本市场的逐渐发开，
市场知名度，加快国际化进程；又可以突
权取得的历史性重大胜利而高兴。三一重
也大大促进中国企业向全球的迈进，走出
破企业瓶颈，学习国外技术，吸纳海外专
工和罗尔斯坚信其合法权益终将得到公平
去是中国企业顺势而为的一项重大战略措
业人才，占领国际市场。
正义的保护。
施。相较国有企业，民营企业更具备世界
国华盛顿哥伦比亚特区联邦巡回上
位。而1994年正式进军重工行业的三一重
挑战安全审查
清科研究中心分析师曹紫婷认为，
眼光与战略思维，当前中国需要一大批民
三一重工事件是历史上美国外资委员会首
营跨国集团，实现国际化经营。而三一重
曹紫婷表示，在三一重工事件中，
次面临严重的诉讼，也是美国政府历史上
工作为行业内的龙头企业，在海外并购方
美国方面干预外国投资的做法直接触犯了
第一次败诉。三一重工的胜利将为更多外
面一直处于领先地位。
WTO原则，是最近几年在金融危机压力之
国企业在美投资赢得发言权，企业向海外
三一重工最受市场瞩目的海外并购案
下所推行的贸易保护主义的一种表现，也
市场进驻的信心也得到了进一步提升；同
例当属2012年斥资3.24亿欧元收购其最
直接违反了美国宪法保护财产所有权的规
时，外管局新发布的37号文较之前有着诸
大竞争对手—德国混凝土泵制造商普茨
定和法定程序。过去美国向世界描绘的蓝
多较大调整，进一步简化和便利境内居民
迈斯特混凝土泵控股公司。普茨迈斯特在
图为全球化时代下，实现完全市场化，充
通过特殊目的公司从事投融资活动所涉及
业内有着“大象”之称，是全球最知名的
分市场竞争；各国发挥比较优势，彼此可
的跨境资本交易，有望为境内居民境外投
工程机械制造商之一，尤其在混凝土泵车
以交换，互通有无。她认为，改革开放前
融资和返程投资打开多扇窗口，便利企业
制造领域。该企业全球市场占有率长期高
30年，中国的发展是符合西方价值取向和
进行海外投资。
达40%左右，市场占有率居于世界领先地
利益的，因为中国大量生产高耗能、高污
2011-2014上半年三一重工海外收购案例统计 收购时间
被并购方
国家/地区
被并购方一级行业
被并购方二级行业
并购金额 (US$M)
收购股权比例
2012年4月
德国普茨迈斯特公司
德国
机械制造
其他
405.00
90.0%
2012年7月
德国Intermix公司
德国
机械制造
其他
10.38
100.0%
2013年7月
德国普茨迈斯特公司
德国
机械制造
其他
54.90
10.0%
2014年5月
奥地利帕尔菲格集团
奥地利
机械制造
其他
148.76
10.0%
来源：私募通 2014年7月
46
China Economic Review | August 2014
话题
三一重工此次胜诉具有历史性意义
染、低人工成本、低附加值的低端产品。
并购前仆后继
司与控股股东万达香港通过在欧洲设立的
现在经过30多年发展，中国在一些高科技
随着欧美经济复苏，海外市场将越来
合营企业万达欧洲成功收购西班牙大厦，
和高端制造领域已经显示出竞争力，开始
越受到中国企业青睐。根据私募通统计，
交易金额约3.60亿美元。西班牙大厦是马
对西方国家形成挑战，与之核心利益产生
今年上半年，中国企业海外并购共完成案
德里四大楼商业区中的最高建筑之一，也
冲突。于是西方开始实行遏制，用国家安
例75起，同比涨幅达92.3%，环比增长
是西班牙20世纪建筑典范。这是万达集团
全条款来阻击中企的收购行为，背弃了长
25.0%；披露金额的63起案例共涉及金
在欧洲收购的第一个项目。
期倡导的自由贸易原则。
额134.46亿美元，较上年同期的196.31
实现价值最大
企业间并购重组在国际资本市场已
亿美元下降31.5%，环比降低28.7%。今
经常态化，各国间资本的流动应当更加开
年6月共完成9起跨国并购，其中海外并购
近年来，基于国家积极推出走出去
放。罗尔斯公司在2012年早期就获得了在
7起，外资并购2起，披露金额的案例共5
战略，国内企业也认识到海外市场将带来
奥尔良一座海军基地附近建设风力发电机
起，披露总金额为13.67亿美元。
更大的发展机会，海外并购因而得以快速
的资格，也得到了美国联邦航空局和国防
值得关注的是河南双汇投资发展股份
发展，尽管如此，由于经验不足，被并购
部的许可，并且该地区也有好几百家外国
有限公司（双汇发展）收购康博菲尔食品
方地区法律审核限制，收购成本高昂等因
风力发电机制造商。当初海军因“空间冲
37%股权，总金额是2.61亿欧元（约3.53
素，大部分企业海外并购以失败告终。
突”提出不满后，罗尔斯很配合地改变了
亿美元）。去年双汇发展以71亿美元成功
根据罗兰贝格的调查，2008至2013
风电场的位置规划。曹紫婷认为，美国方
受让史密斯菲尔德食品公司100%股权。
年间海外并购规模超过1亿美元中国企业
面以事关国家安全为借口来阻止三一集团
康博菲尔食品是欧洲领先的加工肉制品企
中，33%的企业之前没有真正的并购经
进入美国市场，真正的目的不过是为了阻
业，旗下拥有熟火腿、干香肠、干火腿、
验，80%没有海外收购记录。 罗兰贝格整
止中国企业在美国扩大风电市场份额，保
热狗肠、家禽类产品、冷切肉、肉冻及即
理了该段时间内30多个不同制造领域的中
护美国企业的利益。近年来，美国外国投
食食品等产品；双汇发展是国内日均发货
国企业海外收购案例，并对并购后整合进
资委员会针对中资企业在美并购的国家安
量最大的肉制品企业。
行分析发现，中国企业海外并购后整合的
全审查案件数量呈直线上升趋势，中资企
清科研究中心分析师李群认为，本
业在该委员会能否得到公平对待一直是中
次收购符合双汇发展全球化战略，有助于
方密切关注的问题。此次对奥巴马的裁决
加快全球化扩张，提高企业竞争力。双汇
越来越多中国企业通过并购实现全球
是中资企业对美国白宫取得的史无前例的
发展将借助史密斯菲尔德一体化的经营模
化扩张，专业化并购后整合对于最大程度
法律诉讼胜利，这意味着美国对外资并购
式。中美产业链协同效应空间巨大，双汇
获取并购价值的作用日益凸显。中国企业
所进行的国家安全审查，有可能发生重大
发展将得以加快全球扩张步伐。
应尽快弥补在海外运营和并购经验上的缺
程序调整。
今年6月，大连万达集团股份有限公
困难主要来自于陌生的商业环境和陌生的 管理技能两大方面问题。
失，实现海外并购的价值最大化。
China Economic Review | August 2014
47
话题
楼市新风向 上半年上海和华东二线城市商业地产出现新变化
今
年上半年上海和华东地区二线城市 商业地产情况如何？下半年将呈现
怎样的走势？高力国际对上半年华东区房 地产市场的回顾和下半年展望显示，上海 浦东甲级写字楼空置率创新低，二线城市 空置率将有上升。 首先是甲级写字楼市场。受益于现代 服务业的支撑，上海优质写字楼整体需求 在上半年内保持平稳。因此，核心商务区 及次中心市场的空置率均较去年同期有所 下降，而次中心商务区上半年内租金同比 增速高于核心区。上半年内，核心商务区 甲级写字楼市场有4个新增供应入市，而 其中3个项目位于浦西。浦西核心区市场空 置率小幅上升至11.4%，而浦东核心区市 场空置率下降至约1.2%，为6年以来的最
众多品牌新店的开幕导致上海商铺市场整体空置率回落
低位。截至上半年末，核心商务区甲级写 字楼市场平均租金半年环比上升2.8%，同
得注意的是，发展商已逐步放大了上海购
楼投资市场仍持谨慎态度。上半年，唯有
比上升3.8%，至人民币9.1元每天每平方
物中心单体体量，并开始锁定核心区域外
杭州录得1宗整栋交易，散售交易仍是投资
米，主要得益于浦东区域的强劲增长。
的地区。
的主流形式。上半年内，杭州和苏州共有2
上半年，包括苏州、杭州、南京、厦
前5个月间，华东区多数城市的社会
宗面积小于3万平方米的整售交易完成。而
门及武汉在内的华东区二线城市写字楼市
消费品零售总额仍持续以两位数的速度增
回报率稳健的大型商铺物业投资机会仍然
场均有新增供应入市。除南京外，所有城
长。此趋势巩固了这些城市中持续发展的
有限，原因系当地发展商倾向于自持其物
市内现有优质写字楼存量均高于150万平
商铺物业市场，空置率在上述5个城市的现
业以期更高的资本回报。相比之下，散售
方米，厦门的空置率在二线城市中居于首
有项目中均出现下降。上半年，5个城市中
交易由于价格及选址的灵活性而继续受到
位，约为24.1%。上述5个城市承租活动
的4个城市均有新项目入市，且多数新项目
个人投资者的青睐。
均有所趋缓，然而，对成熟商务区域内优
位于郊区或新兴区域，显示出二线城市中
质写字楼的需求仍保持活跃。一些城市的
正在进行的购物中心去中心化趋势。
成熟区域与新兴区域空置率相差悬殊。
区研究部董事谢靖宇表示，上海是全球金
再次是投资市场。上半年上海写字楼
融中心，来自金融及投资等行业的企业租
其次是商铺市场。上半年内，上海
投资市场较去年同期有所放缓。期内共有
赁活动仍将持续活跃。按照政府将经济增
商品零售市场趋缓，然而并未对零售商在
4个整售交易成交，其中3个位于核心商务
长从投资向内需转变的努力来看，中长期
上海的信心产生太大影响，众多品牌新店
区，1个位于次中心市场。外资机构投资者
内，医药、消费品和专业服务等行业的租
的开幕导致整体空置率出现回落。上海中
的活动减弱，这是由于市场内增值型项目
赁需求预计将持续增长，而内资机构投资
高端购物中心物业市场无新增供应入市，
（对机会基金而言）以及收益率在可接受
境外优质资产将更为活跃。二线城市方
因此市场总存量维持在约370万平方米。
范围内的稳定型资产（对核心基金而言）
面，随着新项目不断入市，上述5个城市的
按区域划分，浦西市场现有存量是浦东的
的投资机会有限。上海商铺物业投资市场
空置率将有所上升，时尚服饰品牌将继续
4.4倍，浦东市场供应仍然有限。按类型划
上半年活跃度较去年有所下降，仅录得1个
成为需求的主要来源之一，而餐饮、教育
分，非核心区域零售物业存量是核心区域
股权交易。
及儿童护理等品类的租户在租赁市场中的
市场的1.7倍，占全市总存量的63%。值
48
最后是下半年展望。高力国际中国
China Economic Review | August 2014
国内外机构投资者对二线城市的写字
比重将日益增大。
话题
看取拂云飞 墨尔本杯赛马嘉年华点燃赛马时尚热 文 | 瀚海
骑
术在中国古代起源甚早，春秋时
得了超过它当时被购买价格100多倍的奖
代的孔子认为君子应具备六艺，
金。Exeter曾经与1861和1862年最初两
墨尔本杯赛马嘉年华每年11月在墨尔
其中“御”即驾驶车马。战国时代的贵族
届墨尔本杯比赛的冠军马Archer一起受训
本著名的弗莱明顿赛马场举办，是全澳最
通过赛马来娱乐赌博。田忌赛马的故事家
于澳大利亚的杰出驯马师。
处从未见到过的场景。”他如此描述。
重要的节庆与体育盛事—绝非单纯的赛
喻户晓，告诉人们如何用自己的长处去克
自1861年墨尔本杯创立以来，墨尔
马比赛，而且还是拥有153年历史的社交
制对手的短处。骏马在中国古诗中颇具象
本就陷入了一年一度的墨尔本杯狂热中。
与文化传统节日，足以让整个国家为之定
征意义。唐朝诗人李贺在《马诗》中吟咏
创立后20年，墨尔本杯吸引了大约10万名
格。1级3200米阿联酋墨尔本杯已是世界
道：“一朝沟陇出，看取拂云飞。”意指
观众，相对当时墨尔本不到30万的人口数
上最昂贵的赛马比赛之一，奖金额度高达
有朝一日从沟壑中跃起，让你看掠云飞驰
量，这一数字可谓惊人。
620万澳元（约575万美元）。这是澳大
美国作家马克·吐温曾在《赤道漫
利亚体育赛事中奖金额度最高的比赛，也
西方在古希腊和罗马时代已有赛马，
游记》中提及对1895年墨尔本杯的观后
是世界上奖金额度最高的障碍赛和3200米
中世纪骑士必须掌握的七艺就有骑马。虽
感。“每个男人和女人……只要能负担得
长距离赛。去年，为期4天的墨尔本杯嘉
然赛马古已有之，但现代赛马运动起源于
起开销的都会放下他们的工作，来到墨尔
年华吸引了33万多名观众聚集弗莱明顿赛
18世纪。
的雄姿。用于力争上游的赛马也甚贴切。
本参观。在盛事开始前的两个星期，他们
马场，包括11.7万多名海外游客，为澳大
现代赛马运动于19世纪传入中国，最
便开始坐船或者火车一拥而入，而且日复
利亚经济贡献了3.6亿澳元（约21亿人民
早的赛马场1850年出现在上海。上海人民
一日，路上变得越来越拥挤，直到所有的
币）的收入。
广场的前身就是远东著名的跑马厅。1862
交通车辆被最大程度的征税才能满足这一
而今，历史篇章翻到最的一页。世界
年，澳大利亚一匹名叫Exeter的顶级赛
盛事的需要，所有的旅馆和住所由于来自
最大的赛马俱乐部维多利亚赛马俱乐部于
马被上海买家以100英镑的价格购买并用
内部的压力而变得膨胀起来。他们远道而
7月初抵达上海，独家展示其举世闻名的阿
于在中国比赛，此后，Exeter在中国赢
来，占满了空旷的地面和看台，这是在别
联酋航空墨尔本杯18K金奖杯。墨尔本赛 马嘉年华以其充满魅力的社交和时尚场面 而闻名于世，上海活动还特别邀请了国际 知名的墨尔本制帽商Kim Fletcher带来精 彩的女帽秀，展示她的最新作品系列。 自18世纪的澳洲淘金热开始，华裔已 成为墨尔本人口的重要组成部分。中国是 澳大利亚最大的贸易合作伙伴，两国关系 通过旅游、商业、生活方式、文化交流和 赛马活动而不断渗透巩固。中澳关系也因 每年大量来自中国的游客参加墨尔本杯嘉 年华而持续升温。 每年11月，这股热情都会一如既往地 席卷澳洲，而且最近已经开始蔓延到全世 界。由于全球化和科技的飞速发展，世界 变得越来越小，巨额奖金、世界一流的设 施和马克·吐温描述的独特气氛已经被传 播到了世界每个角落。现在来到弗莱明顿
赛马比赛场景
赛马场的参观者们来自世界各地。
China Economic Review | August 2014
49
看中国
助人为乐 不求回报地帮助陌生人是应该提倡的行为 文 | 晏格文 (Graham Earnshaw)
正
值国内数以亿计的学生放暑假的日 子，我猜想他们之中的大部分都将
时间用于看电视或者上网。但最近我也了 解到了一些例外。 几个月前，我代表英国政府在西安的 一所学校进行了一场演讲，主要是鼓励这 些孩子可以考虑在高中毕业后就到英国留 晏格文
学。演讲末尾，我留下自己的手机号和微 信号，鼓励他们联系我。联系我的学生出
乎意料的多，其中，有个叫Linda的女孩，我们素不相识， 但现在她经常会给我写邮件，汇报自己的近况。最近的邮件 里，她谈到自己在这个暑假的所见所闻，以及帮助流动儿童 的经历。 据我理解，高中生所能参与的暑期志愿者工作主要分为 两种：一种和他们在校的考核评分相关，往往是为一些政府 相关机构工作；另一种则不然，是非官方的，对他们的在校 成绩也无任何额外好处。Linda选择了后者，她也似乎为自 己正在做的事感到相当满足。 为他人提供无私的帮助，能够给自己带来内心的满足 感，这也可能是我们帮助他人的主要原因。尽管“学习雷 锋”的口号和“雷锋”形象在过去半个多世纪深深植根在中 国社会，但依我所见，不求回报地帮助陌生人，并非时常可 见。因而，Linda的决定，让我感到鼓舞。 之后，我曾收到一份项目报告，这个位于北京的项目由 我一位朋友的朋友负责，也同样涉及到了流动儿童。 在报告里，这位朋友这样写道：“一周前，我举办了一 个艺术节。最先在一个外来人口居住的村庄举行，展示给那 儿的孩子看。之后，我们来到北京的一家美术馆。我的学生 们站在这个北京四中的学生曾站过的舞台上，甚至比这些大 城市的孩子表现得更富创意。我为他们感到骄傲。” 这一行为的合理衍生，便是所谓的“公民社会”，作为 一条在世界各地通用且有效的途径，也更应当在中国适用和 推广。 除了“公民社会”，微小的善意之举也同样鼓舞人心。 最先浮现在我脑海的记忆，是2008年徒步穿越长江三峡地 区时，我背着包攀爬从渡口通向镇上的陡峭台阶，没想到有 人主动提出要帮我背包，并且是无偿帮助。对此，我相当感 谢。
50
China Economic Review | August 2014
不少高中生利用暑假给流动儿童以关爱
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Q&A: A state-owned hospitality giant turns to the middle class
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